An assassination that shook British India and overthrew a king

It seemed like an ordinary murder.

One hundred years ago, on this day, January 12, 1925, a group of men attacked a couple traveling by car in an upscale suburb in Bombay (now Mumbai) in colonial India, shooting the man dead and cut the woman’s face.

But the story that unfolded brought global attention to the case, while its complexity embarrassed the country’s then-British rulers and eventually forced an Indian king to abdicate.

Newspapers and magazines described the murder as “perhaps the most sensational crime committed in British India” and it became “the talk of the town” during the investigation and subsequent trial.

The victim, Abdul Kadir Bawla, 25, was an influential textile businessman and the city’s youngest municipal official. His companion, Mumtaz Begum, 22, was a courtesan fleeing the harem of a princely state and had been staying with Bawla for the past few months.

On the night of the murder, Bawla and Mumtaz Begum were in the car with three other people, driving through Malabar Hill, an affluent area along the coast of the Arabian Sea. Cars were a rarity in India at that time and only the rich owned them.

Suddenly, another car overtook them. Before they could react, it collided with theirs, forcing them to stop, according to intelligence and newspaper reports.

The attackers hurled bad words at Bawla and shouted “get the lady out,” Mumtaz Begum later told the Bombay High Court.

They then shot Bawla, who died a few hours later.

A group of British soldiers, who had inadvertently taken a wrong turn while returning from a game of golf, heard the gunshots and rushed to the scene.

They managed to catch one of the culprits, but an officer suffered gunshot wounds when an attacker opened fire on them.

Before fleeing, the remaining attackers made two attempts to snatch the wounded Mumtaz Begum from the British officers, who were attempting to rush her to the hospital.

Newspapers suggested that the attackers’ aim was probably to kidnap Mumtaz Begum, as Bawla, whom she had met while performing in Mumbai a few months earlier and with whom she had been living since, had previously received several threats for harboring her.

The Illustrated Weekly of India promised its readers exclusive photographs of Mumtaz Begum, while the police planned to issue a daily bulletin to the press, the Marathi newspaper Navakal reported.

Even Bollywood found the case compelling enough to adapt it into a silent murder thriller in a matter of months.

“The case went beyond the usual murder mystery as it involved a rich young tycoon, a scorned king and a beautiful woman,” says Dhaval Kulkarni, author of The Bawla Murder Case: Love, Lust and Crime in Colonial India .

The attackers’ footprints, as speculated in the media, led investigators to the influential princely state of Indore, which was an ally of Britain. Mumtaz Begum, a Muslim, had lived in the harem of her Hindu king, Maharaja Tukoji Rao Holkar III.

Mumtaz Begum was famous for her beauty. “In his own class, it was said, Mumtaz had no equal,” wrote KL Gauba in his 1945 book, Famous Trials for Love and Murder.

But the maharajah’s (king) attempts to control her, preventing her from seeing her family alone and keeping her under constant surveillance, soured their relationship, Kulkarni says.

“I was kept under surveillance. I was allowed to see visitors and my relatives, but there was always someone accompanying me,” Mumtaz Begum testified in court.

In Indore she gave birth to a daughter, who died soon after.

“After my daughter was born, I did not want to stay in Indore. I did not want to because the nurses killed the girl who was born,” Mumtaz Begum told the court.

After a few months, he escaped to the northern Indian city of Amritsar, his mother’s birthplace, but trouble arose.

They were also watching her there. Mumtaz Begum’s stepfather told the court that the maharaja cried and begged her to return. But she refused and moved to Bombay, where the surveillance continued.

The trial confirmed what the media had speculated following the murder: the Maharaja’s representatives had threatened Bawla with dire consequences if he continued to harbor Mumtaz Begum, but he had ignored the warnings.

Acting on a tip-off given by Shafi Ahmed, the only attacker caught from the spot, Mumbai police arrested seven men from Indore.

The investigation revealed links to the maharaja that were difficult to ignore. Most of those arrested were employees of the princely state of Indore, had applied for leave at around the same time and were in Bombay at the time of the crime.

The assassination put the British government in a difficult situation. Although it occurred in Bombay, the investigation clearly showed that the plot was planned in Indore, which had strong links with the British.

Calling it “the most uncomfortable matter” for the British government, The New Statesman wrote that if it were a minor state, “there would be no particular cause for anxiety.”

“But Indore has been a powerful feudatory of the Raj,” he said.

Initially, the British government attempted to maintain public silence about the murder’s connection to Indore. But privately he discussed the subject with much alarm, as evidenced by the communication between the governments of Bombay and British India.

Bombay Police Commissioner Patrick Kelly told the British government that all evidence “currently points to a conspiracy hatched in Indore or at the instigation of Indore to kidnap Mumtaj (sic) through hired desperados.”

The government faced pressure from different sides. The wealthy Memons community of Bawla, a Muslim community with roots in present-day Gujarat, raised the issue with the government. His fellow municipal officials mourned his death, saying “surely there must be something more going on behind the scenes.”

Indian lawmakers demanded answers in the upper house of British India’s legislature and the case was even discussed in the British House of Commons.

Rohidas Narayan Dusar, a former police officer, writes in his book about the murder that investigators were under pressure to go slow, but that then-police commissioner Kelly threatened to resign.

The case attracted top lawyers from both the defense and prosecution when it reached the Bombay High Court.

One of them was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who would later become the founding father of Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947. Jinnah defended Anandrao Gangaram Phanse, one of the accused and a senior general in the Indore army. . Jinnah managed to save his client from the death penalty.

The court sentenced three men to death and three to life imprisonment, but stopped short of holding the maharaja responsible.

Judge LC Crump, who presided over the trial, noted, however, that “there were people behind them (the attackers) who we cannot precisely identify.”

“But when an attempt is made to kidnap a woman who was the mistress of the Maharaja of Indore for 10 years, it is not at all unreasonable to consider Indore as the place from which this attack could have emanated,” the judge said. he commented.

The prominence of the case meant that the British government had to act quickly against the Maharaja. He was given the choice: face a commission of inquiry or abdicate, according to documents presented to India’s parliament.

The maharaja decided to resign.

“I abdicate my throne in favor of my son on the understanding that there will be no further investigation into my alleged connection with the Malabar Hill tragedy,” he wrote to the British government.

After abdicating, the Maharaja generated further controversy by insisting on marrying an American woman against the will of his family and community. Eventually, she converted to Hinduism and they married, according to a report from the British Department of the Interior.

Meanwhile, Mumtaz Begum received offers from Hollywood and then moved to the United States to try her luck there. After that, she disappeared into the darkness.