Bhawal case

Ramendra Narayan Roy was a kumar ("prince") of the Bhawal Estate, a large zamindari in Bengal in modern-day Bangladesh from the family of Shrotriya Brahmins.

In 1909 he went to Darjeeling to seek treatment, accompanied by his wife, Bibhabati Devi; her brother Satyendranath Banerjee; and a large retinue, but was reported to have died there on 7 May at the age of 25.

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.

[citation needed] His young wife, Bibhabati Devi, moved to Dhaka to live with her brother Satyen Banerjee.

Over the next ten years the other Bhawal princes also died, and the colonial British Court of Wards took control of the estate on behalf of their widows.

[3] When the crowd questioned him, he remembered the name of his wet nurse, a fact that was not public, and so they recognised him as the second kumar of Bhawal.

On 15 May a large crowd gathered before the Jaidebpur Rajbari in Dhaka and announced in public that they believed that he was the returned kumar.

Managers of the Bhawal estate sent investigators to make inquiries about the identity of the claimant and find witnesses to support their side of the story.

Two investigators went to Punjab to meet Dharamdas Naga, who identified the claimant as his pupil Mal Singh of Aujla, also known as Sundardas.

On 3 June the Board of Revenue announced in public that they had proof that the kumar's body had been cremated in Darjeeling and therefore the claimant was an impostor.

Some of them included alleged eyewitness reports of how a group of sanyasis had rescued the still-alive kumar from the funeral pyre, taken him away and healed him.

Some writers wrote plays or stories to make their point about the case, some of them accusing Bibhabati and his brother of incestuous relations or conspiracy to poison the kumar.

The Board of Revenue claimed that the whole matter was a conspiracy organised by interested parties who wanted to use the estate for their own purposes.

He tried to use various official channels to argue his case until 1929, when he moved back to Dhaka and began to collect tenant's rents and tribute against his share of the 1/3 of the property.

On 24 April 1930, lawyers working for the claimant, supported by the sisters and elder sister-in-law of the kumar, filed a declaratory suit in Dhaka claiming the name and property of Ramendra Narayan Roy against Bibhabati Devi and other landholders who were represented by the Court of Wards.

[1] In court the sanyasi declared that he fell victim to a conspiracy hatched by his brother-in-law Satyendranath Banerjee, an unemployed graduate who wanted to control his share of the estate through his childless sister.

He further alleged that Satyendranath had bribed the family physician, Ashutosh Dasgupta, to state that the rajkumar was suffering from syphilis and was persuaded by the conspirators to go for treatment to Darjeeling, where they all lodged at a house called "Step Aside," close to the funeral ground.

Defense also argued that the kumar's syphilis had advanced to the state of open sores when there was no sign of any syphilitic scars on the claimant's body.

Defense questioned the kumar's sister, Jyotirmayi Debi, who supported the claimant, stating that he had various family characteristics and that he did speak Bengali.

The plaintiff's side, in turn, closely questioned Bibhabati Devi, who denied she saw any resemblance between her dead husband and the claimant.

[citation needed] In September 1935, the guru Dharamdas Naga arrived to testify in court through an interpreter and repeated that he recognised the claimant as his former disciple Sundardas, previously Mal Singh, who was a Punjabi Sikh from Lahore.

[5] Judge Pannalal Basu deliberated his final judgment for three months and on 24 August 1936, after a very detailed explanation and with a large crowd waiting outside, he ruled in favour of the claimant.

Three judges, Sir Leonard Costello, Charu Chandra Biswas and Ronald Francis Lodge, formed a special bench for the case.

Costello criticised the Court of Wards for pressuring witnesses with irrelevant questions and withholding documents.

On 25 November, after two months of deliberation, the court announced that Costello's view was valid and therefore the appeal was dismissed.