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 shelter Mumtaz Begum, but he had ignored the warnings.
Following the trail of Shafi Ahmed, the only attacker caught red-handed, 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 happened in Bombay, the 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 the evidence “currently points to a conspiracy hatched in Indore or instigated 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.
