The murder that shook British India and overthrew the king

It looked like an ordinary murder.

One hundred years ago today – January 12, 1925 – a group of men attacked a couple driving a car in the upscale suburb of Bombay (now Mumbai) in colonial India, shooting the man and slashing the woman’s face.

But the story that unfolded brought the entire case into the limelight, while its complexity put the country’s then British rulers in trouble and eventually forced the 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 youngest municipal official in the city. His companion, Mumtaz Begum, 22, was a courtesan on the run from the harem of the princely state and had been staying with Bawla for the past few months.

On the evening of the murder, Bawla and Mumtaz Begum were in a car with three other people and were driving through Malabar Hill, a wealthy 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, he collided with theirs, forcing them to stop, according to intelligence and news reports.

The attackers hurled abuse at Bawla and shouted “take 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 on their way back from a game of golf, heard the shots and rushed to the scene.

They managed to catch one of the culprits, but one policeman sustained gunshot wounds when the assailant opened fire on them.

Before fleeing, the remaining attackers tried twice to kidnap the injured Mumtaz Begum from the British officers who were trying to rush her to hospital.

Newspapers suggested that the assailants’ aim was likely to be to kidnap Mumtaz Begum, as Bawla – whom she had met at a performance in Mumbai a few months earlier and with whom she had been living ever since – had previously received several threats for harboring her.

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

Even Bollywood found the case compelling enough to turn it into a silent murder thriller within months.

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

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

Mumtaz Begum was known for her beauty. “In her class, it was said, Mumtaz was second to none,” wrote KL Gauba in his 1945 book, Famous Trials for Love and Murder.

But the maharaja’s (king’s) attempts to control her — preventing her from seeing her family in private and keeping her under constant surveillance — strained their relationship, Kulkarni says.

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

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

“After my child was born, I didn’t want to stay in Indore. I didn’t want to because the nurses killed the female child that was born,” Mumtaz Begum told the court.

Within months, she fled to the northern Indian city of Amritsar, her mother’s birthplace, but trouble followed.

And there she was watched. Mumtaz Begum’s stepfather told the court that the Maharaja was crying and begging her to come back. But she refused and moved to Bombay, where the surveillance continued.

The trial confirmed what the media had speculated after the murder: representatives of the maharaja had indeed threatened Bawli with dire consequences if he continued to harbor Mumtaz Begum, but he had ignored the warnings.

Following the trail of Shafi Ahmed, the only attacker caught on the spot, the Bombay police arrested seven men from Indore.

The investigation revealed connections to the Maharaja that were hard to ignore. Most of the men arrested were employed in the princely state of Indore, applied for leave 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 took place in Bombay, investigation clearly showed that the plot was planned in Indore, which had strong connections with the British.

Calling it “a most inconvenient affair” for the British government, The New Statesman wrote that if it were a smaller state, “there would be no particular cause for concern”.

“But Indore was a powerful feudal lord of the Raja,” it was said.

At first, the British government tried to remain silent in public about the connection of the murder with Indore. But in private the matter was discussed with great concern, as the communications between the governments of Bombay and British India show.

Bombay Police Commissioner Patrick Kelly told the British government that all evidence “points at present to a conspiracy hatched in Indore or incited by Indore to abduct Mumtaj (sic) through hired desperadoes”.

The government faced pressure from different sides. Bawla’s community of wealthy Memons, 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 behind the scenes.”

Indian lawmakers demanded answers in the upper house of the British Indian legislature, and the case was even debated in the British House of Commons.

Rohidas Narayan Dusar, a former policeman, writes in his book about the murder that investigators were under pressure to go slow, but then Police Commissioner Kelly threatened to resign.

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

One of them was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who would later become the founder of Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947. Jinnah defended Anandrao Gangaram Phanse, one of the accused and the commander-in-chief of the Indore army. Jinnah was able to save his client from the death penalty.

The court sentenced three men to death and three to life imprisonment, but did not hold the maharaja accountable.

Judge LC Crump, who presided over the trial, pointed out, however, that “behind them (the attackers) were people who we cannot pinpoint”.

“But when an attempt is made to abduct a woman, who was for 10 years the mistress of the Maharaja of Indore, it is not at all unreasonable to look upon Indore as the quarter from which this attack could have emanated,” the judge observed.

The significance of the case meant that the British government had to act quickly against the Maharaja. They gave him a choice: face a commission of inquiry or abdicate, according to documents presented to India’s parliament.

The Maharaja decided to resign.

“I abdicate in favor of my son on the condition that no further inquiry be made into my alleged connection with the Malabar Hill tragedy,” he wrote to the British government.

After he abdicated, the Maharaja caused even more controversy by insisting on marrying an American woman against the will of his family and community. She eventually converted to Hinduism and they married, according to a British Home Office report.

Meanwhile, Mumtaz Begum received offers from Hollywood and later moved to the US to try her luck there. After that, she disappeared into oblivion.