A murder that shook British India and overthrew a king

It looked like an ordinary murder.

On this day one hundred years ago – January 12, 1925 – a group of men attacked a couple riding in a car in a suburb of Bombay (now Mumbai) in colonial India, shooting the man dead and wounding the woman's face.

But the story that unfolded brought the issue into the global spotlight, while its complexity put the country's then-British rulers in a bind, eventually forcing an Indian king to abdicate.

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

The victim was Abdelkader Paula, 25 years old, an influential businessman in the textile sector and the city's youngest municipal official. His companion, Mumtaz Begum, 22, was a courtesan who had escaped from the harem of the princely state and had been staying with Paula for the past few months.

On the evening of the murder, Paula and Mumtaz Begum were in the car with three others, driving in Malabar Hill, an affluent area along the shore of the Arabian Sea. Cars were rare in India at that time, and only the rich owned them.

Suddenly another car passed them. Before they could respond, it collided with their car, forcing them to stop, according to intelligence and press reports.

Mumtaz Begum later told the Bombay High Court that the attackers showered Paula with obscenities and shouted, “Get the lady out.”

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

A group of British soldiers, who had inadvertently taken a wrong turn on their way back from a golf match, heard gunshots and rushed to the scene.

They were able to arrest one of the perpetrators, but one of the officers was injured by gunfire when an attacker opened fire on them.

Before fleeing, the remaining attackers made two attempts to snatch the injured Mumtaz Begum from the hands of the British officers who were trying to take her to the hospital.

The newspapers indicated that the attackers' goal was most likely to kidnap Mumtaz Begum, as Paula – whom she met while performing in Mumbai a few months ago and has been living with her ever since – had previously received several threats for harboring her.

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

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

“The case went beyond the usual murder mystery, involving a wealthy, young businessman, a disgraced king, and a beautiful woman,” says Dhaval Kulkarni, author of The Paula Murder Case: Love, Lust, and Crime in Colonial India.

The attackers' footprints, the media speculated, led investigators to the powerful princely state of Indore, which was a British ally. Mumtaz Begum, a Muslim, lived in the harem of her Hindu king, Maharaja Tokoji Rao Holkar III.

Mumtaz Begum was famous for her beauty. K wrote the. Juba in his 1945 book, “The Famous Trials of Love and Murder,” says: “It was said in her classroom that Mumtaz was without peer.”

But the Maharaja's attempts to control her – preventing her from seeing her family alone and keeping her under constant surveillance – ruined their relationship, says Kulkarni.

“I was put under surveillance. I was allowed to see visitors and relatives, but someone was always accompanying me,” Mumtaz Begum said in her testimony before the court.

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

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

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

She was monitored there as well. 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 in the wake of the murder: the Maharaja's representatives had indeed threatened Paula with dire consequences if he continued to harbor Mumtaz Begum, but he ignored the warnings.

After Shafi Ahmed, the only attacker arrested at the scene, came forward, Bombay Police arrested seven men from Indore.

The investigation revealed connections with the Maharaja that were difficult to ignore. Most of the arrested men were employed by the princely state of Indore, had applied for leave around the same time and were in Bombay at the time of the crime.

The murder put the British government in a difficult position. Although this happened in Bombay, the investigation clearly showed that the plot was planned in Indore, which had strong ties with the British.

Describing it as “the most critical matter” for the British government, the New Statesman wrote that if it were a small country, “there would be no particular cause for concern.”

“But Indore was a powerful fiefdom of the Raj,” she added.

The British government initially tried to remain silent about the connection to the Indore murder publicly. But she discussed the issue privately with great concern, as 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 plot hatched in Indore or instigated by Indore to kidnap Mumtaz (sic) by hired desperate men.”

The government faced pressure from various parties. The wealthy Memon community of Baola, a Muslim community with roots in modern-day Gujarat, has raised the issue with the government. His fellow municipal officials mourned his death, saying: “Surely there must be something else behind the scenes.”

Indian lawmakers demanded answers in the upper house of British India's legislature, and the issue was even debated in the British House of Commons.

Rohidas Narayan Dosar, a former police officer, wrote in his book about the murder that investigators were pressured to move slowly, but Police Commissioner Kelly threatened to resign.

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

One of them was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who later became the founding father of Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947. Jinnah defended Anandrao Gangaram Vance, 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 it did not go so far as to hold the Maharaja accountable.

However, Judge L. bad. Crump, who presided over the trial, noted that “there are people behind them (the attackers) who we cannot accurately identify.”

“But when an attempt is made to kidnap a woman who was for 10 years the mistress of the Maharaja of Indore, it is not at all unreasonable to view Indore as the place from which this attack may have been launched,” the judge said. Notice.

The importance 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 submitted to India's parliament.

The Maharaja chose to resign.

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

After abdicating the throne, the Maharaja sparked 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 British Home Office report.

Meanwhile, Mumtaz Begum received offers from Hollywood and later moved to the United States to try her luck there. She faded into obscurity after that.