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 km
2) 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.
Before the
Mughal conquest,
Bhawal Estate belonged to Gazis of Bhawal. The first known Gazi was Fazal Gazi,
who lent a
cannon to
Sher 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 km
2) 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 British
Court 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
