Bawla case: A murder that shook British India and toppled a king

The case initially appeared to be a simple murder. On January 12, 1925, exactly one hundred years ago today, in a posh suburb of Bombay (now Mumbai), India, then under British colonial rule, a group of men attacked a couple traveling in a car. The man was shot and killed, while the woman was slashed across the face.

However, as the case unfolded, it garnered global attention. Its complexity stumped the British rulers of the time and eventually forced an Indian king to abdicate. Newspapers and magazines described the murder as "the most sensational crime 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 merchant and the city's youngest municipal councilor. His companion, Mumtaz Begum, 22, was a courtesan who had escaped from a princely state's harem and had been living with Bawla for the past few months. On the night of the murder, Bawla and Mumtaz Begum were traveling in a car with three other people in the affluent Malabar Hill area along the Arabian Sea.

According to intelligence and newspaper reports, another car suddenly overtook them. Before they could react, that car rammed into theirs, forcing them to stop. Mumtaz Begum later testified in the Bombay High Court that the assailants hurled abuse at Bawla, shouting, "Get the woman out." They then shot Bawla, who died a few hours later.

A group of British soldiers, who had taken a wrong turn on their way back from playing golf, heard the gunshots and arrived at the scene. They managed to apprehend one of the criminals, but an officer was shot and wounded when an assailant fired at them. Before fleeing, the remaining attackers twice tried to snatch the injured Mumtaz Begum from the British officers who were attempting to take her to the hospital.

Newspapers speculated that the attackers' target was most likely to kidnap Mumtaz Begum. She had met Bawla while performing in Mumbai a few months prior and had been living with him ever since, and Bawla had previously received multiple threats for sheltering her. Even Bollywood found the case intriguing enough to adapt it into a silent murder thriller within months.

"This case transcended the usual murder mystery because it involved a wealthy and young tycoon, a disgraced king, and a beautiful woman," said Dhaval Kulkarni, author of "The Bawla Murder: Love, Lust and Crime in Colonial India." Media speculation led investigators to the influential princely state of Indore, a British ally. Mumtaz Begum, a Muslim, had lived in the harem of the Hindu King Tukojirao Holkar III.

Mumtaz Begum was known for her beauty. "It was said that in her own class, Mumtaz was unmatched," wrote K.L. Gauba in his 1945 book, "Famous Trials for Love and Murder." But according to Kulkarni, the king's attempts to control her—preventing her from seeing her family alone and keeping her under constant surveillance—had soured their relationship. "I was kept under watch. I was allowed to see visitors and my relatives, but there was always someone with me," Mumtaz Begum testified in court.

In Indore, she gave birth to a baby girl, but the child died shortly after. "After my child was born, I did not want to stay in Indore. I did not want to, because the nurse killed the baby girl that was born," Mumtaz Begum said in court. Within months, she escaped to Amritsar, a city in northern India and her mother's birthplace, but trouble followed. She was under surveillance there as well. Mumtaz Begum's stepfather testified in court that the king had pleaded with her, crying, to return. But she refused and moved to Mumbai, where the surveillance continued.

The trial confirmed what the media had speculated after the murder: the king's representatives had indeed threatened Bawla with dire consequences if he continued to shelter Mumtaz Begum, but he had ignored the warnings. Based on leads provided by the only assailant apprehended at the scene, Shafi Ahmed, Mumbai police arrested seven men from Indore. Investigations revealed undeniable links to the king. Most of the arrested men were employed by the Indore princely state, had applied for leave during the same time period, and were in Mumbai at the time of the crime.

The murder put the British government in a difficult position. Although it had occurred in Mumbai, the investigation clearly showed that the conspiracy had been hatched in Indore, which had close ties with Britain. The New Statesman called it "the most embarrassing affair" for the British government, writing that if it had been a minor state, "there would have been no particular cause for concern." "But Indore has been a powerful vassal under British rule," the magazine wrote. The British government initially tried to conceal the connection between the murder and Indore from the public. But communications between the Mumbai and British Indian governments showed that they were privately discussing the issue with great trepidation.

Patrick Kelly, the Mumbai Police Commissioner, told the British government that all the evidence "at present points to a conspiracy hatched or instigated in Indore, to kidnap Mumtaz [sic] by hired desperadoes." The government was facing pressure from all sides. Bawla's wealthy Memon community (a Muslim community originating in modern-day Gujarat) raised the issue with the government. His fellow municipal councilors mourned his death and said, "There is definitely more to it than meets the eye." Indian legislators demanded answers in the upper house of the British Indian legislature, and the case was even discussed in the British House of Commons.

Former police officer Rohidas Narayan Dusaal wrote in his book about the murder that investigators faced pressure to slow down the investigation, but then-Police Commissioner Kelly threatened to resign. When the case reached the Bombay High Court, both the defense and prosecution hired top lawyers. One of them was Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who would later become the father of Pakistan after the 1947 partition of India. Jinnah defended one of the defendants, Anand Rao Gangaram Phanse, a high-ranking 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 no charges were brought against the king. However, the presiding judge, L.C. Crump, noted that "there are persons behind them [the assailants] whom we cannot definitely point out." "But when there is an attempt to kidnap a woman who had been the mistress of the King of Indore for 10 years, it is by no means unreasonable to look to Indore as a probable source of this attack," the judge commented. The high profile of the case meant that the British government had to act quickly against the king. According to documents submitted to the Indian parliament, they gave him a choice: either face a commission of inquiry or abdicate.

The king chose to abdicate. "I am relinquishing the throne to my son on the condition that no further investigation is made into my alleged connection with the Malabar Hill tragedy," he wrote to the British government. After abdicating, the king, against the wishes of his family and community, insisted on marrying an American woman, which sparked further controversy. According to a British Home Office report, she eventually converted to Hinduism, and they married. Meanwhile, Mumtaz Begum received an invitation from Hollywood and later moved to the United States to try her luck there. She gradually faded from public view after that.