She was the younger daughter of General Nara Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana, KCVO, sometime Inspector-General of the Royal Nepal Police, by his first wife, Uma Rajya Lakshmi, of Doti.
On the evening of June 1, 2001, ten members of the Nepalese royal family were murdered, reportedly by the Crown Prince Dipendra.
During the massacre, Princess Helen Shah was with her sister-in-law, Queen Mother Ratna (the widow of King Mahendra), in the anteroom, and thus the two women survived.
Princess Jayanti had worked hard to help heart patients and making cardiac treatment more affordable and reachable to the common people of Nepal.
[5] Princess Helen Shah, the widow of Prince Basundhara, died of cancer[6] on September 12, 2007 at the King Birendra Military Hospital, Chhauni.