Jah left the management of his inheritance in the hands of people he thought he could trust, with disastrous consequences. Priceless antiques were pillaged or sold off for a fraction of their worth. Jewels landed up at international auction houses. Palace lands were being encroached on. One of those closely watching this slow-motion car crash was Mir Ayoob Ali Khan, who I interviewed when he was working for the Deccan Chronicle.
Even in those early years he was already running up debts and tax arrears. The order would come that he needed money and out came the jewels and antiques. If the offer was [Rs] 10, they would say take it, And these rupees would be unaccounted for.
But the property, the precious antiques and so on were vanishing from his palaces. Lots of people were making money and the controlling authority was very weak. Whoever Jah put there was unable to check the slide. By the slide had become a rout. The pain was being felt in Australia where Jah was unable to pay his bills. An old family friend, the late Hyderabadi jeweller Sadruddin Javeri, lent him money and briefly put his affairs in order, but the damage had been done and in Murchison House Station and his mansion in Perth were on the market to pay off his debts to Javeri.
His personal life also was in tatters. When Esra divorced him he married a local girl from Perth, Helen Simmons, who converted to Islam and changed her name to Ayesha. A fairytale romance that provided gossip columnists with plenty of fodder turned to tragedy when Helen contracted AIDS in after an affair with a bisexual man.
When she died a few months later, Jah was devastated. Mukarram Jah posing near the old Roman ruins, which he loved, in Antalya, Turkey. The ruling ends over 70 years legal dispute over the beneficiary of the funds the Nizam sought back after his kingdom became part of India. Niloufer, the daughter of Mukarram Jah, the eighth Nizam of Hyderabad, said on Sunday that she will go to court if she is denied her rightful share in ancestral property.
In October , a UK court had ruled in favour of India and the Princes while dismissing Pakistan's claim over the funds belonging to the late Nizam that were deposited in a London bank account, settling a over year legal dispute. The dispute revolves around 1,, pounds and nine shillings that were transferred in from the then Nizam of Hyderabad, Osman Ali Khan, to the High Commissioner in Britain of the newly-formed Pakistan. That amount has since grown into millions. Have you read these stories?
Tamil Nadu reports 14 deaths amid heavy rains Updated: Nov 12, , As many as 14 people have lost their lives in Tamil Nadu due to heavy rains. ET NOW. Brand Solutions. Thus Barkat, then in his 30s, woke up one day to find he had superseded his own parents in royal status and now they had to bow to him as the future king. It may have offered him grim satisfaction, but the rift between father and son was now complete.
What he did not bank on was the way his mother too turned against him. She turned to her younger son Prince Muffakham Jah for solace. Azam died a bitter man in Barkat, despite his British public school education, proved to be too inept to handle the enormous responsibility that was thrust on him.
In , the then prime minister Mrs Gandhi abolished all the officially recognised princely titles and two years later abolished the system of privy purses—the tax free annual compensation that was paid to the rulers in exchange for merging their kingdoms into the Indian union in This meant that the rulers like Barkat now had to feed and look after their palaces, courtiers and the thousands of retainers with money from their own pocket.
His problems were further compounded by hundreds of family members who moved courts for a share of the fortune. The internecine warfare to grab some of that booty would have tested the strongest of leaders. And Barkat was definitely no leader. So he crumbled. This was not the life of fame and fortune he had expected. He chose to deal with the problem in the only way he knew, by escaping from it. He left his affairs in the hands of courtiers, signing away his Power of Attorney and took to travelling aimlessly around the world.
While the king was away, it was a free for all at the palaces. The courtiers, friends and relatives took to plundering the palaces and estates. Anything that they could lay their hands on was taken away to be sold. And whatever could not be taken away was mismanaged. It was acquired by the government for Rs crore, of which Rs crore came to the family after taxes. The rest of the money is still under litigation with hundreds of relatives claiming parts of it.
He is an intelligent man who found dealing with all the issues relating to his wealth and power in India difficult to handle. But in my opinion he ran away from his historical responsibility and paid the price for it. He soon gained the confidence of the Nizam who handed over control of his interests in India to him. Zaveri of course has another story. Esra preferred the company of her mother-in-law with whom she had more in common than her taciturn, arrogant husband.
Within a few years of taking over as Nizam Barkat took refuge from the home front by escaping to Australia where he fell in love with his secretary Helen, a large, rambunctious, sensuous woman who enjoyed boasting of her many lovers.
She could not have been more different from the stiff lipped aristocratic women in his family and he adored her for it. The rift with his mother and first wife was now too vast to bridge. They were appalled at his choice and how he had allowed the prestigious years old Asaf Jahi dynasty to be associated with a commoner. Istanbul had in any case, right from the beginning, felt more like home than Hyderabad. On a blind date there he was introduced to the charming ex-Ms Turkey Manolya Onur who became his third wife.
He was so obviously lonely. By then, fortunately for him, his mother and first wife had migrated to London to set up mansions there. For Manolya, India was a dream.
She recalls how they came to India to live in unimaginable luxury in his beautiful palace. A palace straight from The Arabian Nights, the most magnificent jewels and clothes to wear, battalions of servants falling over you, a fleet of cars at my disposal.
But for Barkat the nightmare had restarted within a few months. People kept threatening him with court cases. The government was constantly encroaching on his various properties.
The squabbles with everyone over money irritated him. After three months he could not bear it anymore. He decided to escape to Australia once again. He bought this huge ranch in the outback in Australia and insisted we shift there to live among dingo dogs, cowboys, cattle and snakes.
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