Mahal family
[1] Members of the family who moved to Delhi lived in Malcha Mahal, a hunting lodge that dates back to the 14th century.
[9] The British seized the throne from the Royal House of Oudh, removing Nawab Ramzan Ali and forcing him to spend the rest of his life in Nepal in exile.
Zamrud reportedly appeared before Edward VIII when he visited Delhi in 1911 and informed him that she refused to accept a stipend from the British, which had been offered in return for their inheritance.
Wilayat went on to state that in 1947, the first prime minister of an independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, granted the family an ancestral palace in Srinagar, Kashmir.
[1] After his death in 1951, Wilayat Malik found herself increasingly at odds with the position of the Government of Pakistan on the issue of the Kashmir conflict.
They lived on a railroad platform for close to ten years, originally in the first class waiting room (reportedly built for Louis Mountbatten, the last Governor-General of India),[17] and then in a portico.
[21] The family of Awadh had been a powerful figure among the Shiite Muslims of Lucknow and Wilayat and her children thus received many pilgrims and the support of the community.
[6] The three Quder brothers, the legitimate descendants of the Oudh State, also met Wilayat to verify her claims during this period.
[22] The family wrote multiple letters to authorities, including Indira Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, and Queen Elizabeth II.
[11] In 1984, Indira Gandhi visited the family at the train station and ordered the Home Ministry to look for a suitable place for them to live in.
Begum Wilayat Mahal died by suicide in October 1993, consuming the "drink of silence", a mixture of toxic powders reportedly containing the crushed family pearls and diamonds.
[6] A photo of another of Wilayat's sons was in the palace; the family stated that he had died of "sadness" during their stay at the railway station.
In the early 1970s, still empty-handed, increasingly bizarre in her behavior, Wilayat announced to the world that she was the queen of Oudh, demanding the vast properties of a kingdom that no longer existed.
In November 2019, The New York Times released an article entitled "The Jungle Prince of Delhi", written by Ellen Barry.
In the piece, Barry, the former South Asia Bureau Chief in New Delhi, tells the story of how she became friends with Ali "Cyrus" Raza.
[6] Shahid told Barry how following the Partition of India, their father had moved the family to his hometown, Lahore, Pakistan, which Wilayat did not want to do.
After an incident with the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Wilayat had been institutionalized at a mental hospital and subjected to electric shock therapy, which the surviving relatives living in Lahore confirmed to Barry.
[6] Following the publication of the article, many readers sent more leads to The New York Times, which Barry and Suhasini Raj investigated further to unearth more information about the family.
[7] Wilayat then wrote multiple petitions to the Government of India demanding citizenship in Jammu and Kashmir, the earliest one being in 1962.
[34] In July 2020, Barry announced that Mira Nair would be adapting "The Jungle Prince of Delhi" as a web series for Amazon Studios.
