The Strange Case of Bhawal Estate !

Bhawal Estate (Bengali: ভাওয়াল) was a large zamindari estate in Bengal in modern-day Bangladesh. Bhawal Estate spread over 579 square miles (1,500 km²) and covered 2,274 villages with the combined population around 500,000, many of them tenant farmers. It gained particular notoriety during the famous Bhawal case.

The area under the estate currently falls under the Gazipur District and the Upazilas of Bangladesh Kaliganj of Dhaka Division. The most famous capitol of the Bhawal Estate was Choira Meah Bari, where zamindar Fazal Gazi lived. He was one of the Baro-Bhuyans(twelve zamindars of Bengal).

Before the Mughal conquest, Bhawal Estate belonged to Gazis of Bhawal. The first known Gazi was Fazal Gazi, who lent a cannon toSher Shah Suri with 'Az Fazal Gazi' (from Fazal Gazi) inscribed on it. Bahadur Gazi was in control during Akbar's invasion. Gazis accepted Mughal suzerainty during Subahdar Islam Khan's final conquest and rule of Bengal. Gazipur District was named after the Gazis of Bhawal.

The Rajas of Bhawal came from the village of Bajrayogini under Munshiganj. Bala Ram, the ancestor of the Rajas of Bhawal, was Dewan to Daulat Gazi at the time of Murshid Kuli Khan's reign in the late seventeenth century. As a policy to collect proper and due revenue, Murshid Kuli Khan replaced many Muslim zamindaris with Hindu ones. Dewan Bala Ram took the opportunity and convinced Murshid Kuli to install his son, Sri Krishna, as the zamindar of Bhawal in 1704 instead of Daulat Gazi. His family ruled Bhawal until the abolition of the zamindari system in 1951 at Choira Meah Bari, which was the capital of Bhawal.

The Bhawal case was an extended Indian court case about a possible impostor who claimed to be the prince of Bhawal, who was presumed dead a decade earlier.

Ramendra Narayan Roy was one of the kumars ("princes") of the Bhawal Estate, a large zamindar in Bengal in modern-day Bangladesh. He was one of three brothers who had inherited the estate from their father. The Bhawal Estate spread over 579 square miles (1,500 km²) and included villages with a population of around 500.000, many of them tenant farmers.

Ramendra Narayan Roy, Second kumar of Bhawal, spent most of his time hunting, in festivities and with women, having several mistresses. By 1905 he had contracted syphilis. In 1909 he went to Darjeeling to seek treatment but was reported to have died there on May 7 at the age of 25. The reported cause of death was biliary colic (gallstones). His body was supposedly cremated in Darjeeling the next day and customary funerary rites were performed on the 8th of May.

Later there was much discussion of what had exactly happened on the 8th of May and what was the exact time of the cremation and exactly who had been cremated. Some witnesses testified that a sudden hailstorm had interrupted the cremation just before the pyre should have been lighted and the body might have disappeared when the mourners had sought shelter.

His young wife Bibhabati Debi moved to Dhaka to live with her brother Satyen Banerjee. Over the next ten years the other Bhawal Estate kumars also died and the colonial BritishCourt of Wards took control of the estate on behalf of their widows.

Over the years there were rumours that Ramendra's body had not been successfully cremated, that the body had disappeared or that he had been seen alive. Relatives sent people to Bengal to investigate rumours that he had become a sannyasi, a religious ascetic. Jyotirmayi, a sister of the kumars, made inquiries and gradually became convinced that her middle brother was somehow alive.

Around 1920-1921 a sannyasi appeared in Buckland Bund in Dhaka covered in ashes. He sat on the street for four months and attracted attention because he was of unusually good physical condition. There were rumors that the second kumar had returned, even when the man said that he had renounced his family. Buddhu, the son of an elder sister of the brothers, visited him but was not yet convinced. Some of the locals arranged for the man's visit to Jaidebpur where he arrived on April 12, 1921 on an elephant.

Over the following couple of days, relatives became convinced that this man was the second kumar, but he returned to Dhaka by April 25. Relatives invited him back to Jaidebpur on April 30 when various relatives and tenants came to see him. When the crowd questioned him, he remembered the name of his wet nurse, a fact that was not public and they recognized him as the second kumar of Bhawal.

The man said that he had become ill in Darjeeling and forgot much of it. He had recovered in the jungle alongside the sadhu Dharamdas Naga who said that he had found him lying on the ground, wet from rain. The sadhu had become his guru and he had spent the intervening years as a sannyasi.

The claimant said that he had wandered all around India without recollection of his past until his memory began to return and his guru told him to return home.

On April 24, 1930, lawyers working for the claimant filed a suit against Bibhabati Debi and other landholders who were represented by the Court of Wards. District judge Alan Henderson assigned judge Panna Lal Basu/Pannalal Bose to the case. Bejoy Chandra Chatterjee served as counsel for the claimant, now a plaintiff. Amiya Nath Chaudhuri counseled the defendants, those represented by the Court of wards. The trial began on November 30, 1933.

Lawyers working for the Court of Wards tried to prove that this barely literate man could not be of Brahmin caste, but those on the claimant's side were able to prove that kumar had really been able to barely read and write. Defense also claimed that the fact that Kumar had had a mistress named Elokeshi was total fiction. When Elokeshi was summoned, she said that police had offered her money for not testifying.

Defense also argued that kumar's syphilis had advanced to the state of open sores when there were no sign of any syphilitic scars in the claimant's body. The claimant spoke mainly Urdu, claiming that he had forgotten most of his Bengali during his travels. There was also an argument about the exact color of kumar's eyes. There were also claims that the body burned in the funeral pyre had been a substitute.

Both sides summoned hundreds of witnesses and some of their comments were contradictory. Defense questioned kumar's sister Jyotirmayi Debi, who supported the claimant and stated that the claimant had various family characteristics and that the claimant did speak Bengali. The plaintiff's side, in turn, closely questioned Bibhabati Debi, who denied she saw any resemblance between her dead husband and the claimant. Ananda Kumari, widow of one of the other kumars, claimed that the kumar had been able to speak English and write in Bengali, neither of which the claimant could do. However, the letters that were presented as evidence of this were found to be forgeries.

In September 1935, the guru Dharamdas Naga arrived to testify in court through an interpreter and repeated that he recognized the claimant as his former disciple Sundardas, previously Mal Singh, who was a Punjabi sikh from Lahore. Das fell ill and had to be questioned outside the courthouse. The claimant's supporters insisted that this guru was a fraud. Both sides' closing arguments lasted for 6 weeks before the court adjourned on May 20, 1936.

Judge Pannabal Basu deliberated his final judgment for three months and on August 24, 1936, after a very detailed explanation and with a large crowd waiting outside, he ruled in favor of the claimant. Afterwards he retired from the judiciary.

The claimant was allowed to withdraw money from his share of the estate. He still left this share in the care of the Court of Wards until further developments. He also got married.

The Board of Revenue did not answer right away and A.N. Chaudhuri withdrew from the case but Bibhabati Debi was not ready to give up. Developments of the war delayed further appeals until 1943, when lawyers for Bibhabati Debi filed appeal for a leave for appeal against the judgment of the High Court in the Privy Council in London. Partially because of the bomb damage to the council chamber in the blitz, The Council moved to the House of Lords and the next hearing began there in 1945. D.N. Pritt worked for the claimant's side and king's counsel W.W. K. Page argued the case for the Court of Wards.

The Privy Council did grant the leave to appeal. Lord Thankerton, Lord Herbert du Parcq and Sir Chettur Madhavan Nair handled the case. The hearing lasted for 28 days. On July 30, 1946 they ruled in favour of the claimant and dismissed the appeal. Judgment was telegraphed to Calcutta the next day.

The same evening, when the claimant went to offer prayers, he suffered a stroke and died two days later. Funeral rites were performed on August 13, 1946. Bibhabati Debi later regarded this as a divinely ordained punishment for impostor. She later refused the inheritance (Rs. 800000) coming from the estate.

Taken from Wikipedia