Above: Maharaja Harinder Singh of Faridkot. Below: Maharani Narinder Kaur of Faridkot.
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The Princesses and The Ogres:
A Victory For Amrit & Deepinder Kaur of Faridkot
SAM WEBB
It has all the makings of a best-selling novel.
A Sikh Maharajah crowned as a toddler and rich beyond imagination falls into a deep depression in old age after losing his only son.
After his own death a few months later, his daughters, the princesses, don't get the palaces, gold and vast lands they claim as their birthright.
Instead, they are given a few dollars a month from palace officials they accuse of scheming to usurp the royal billions with a forged will.
The fight rages for decades.
On Saturday, March 21, 2015, an Indian court brought this chapter to a close, ruling that the will of Maharajah Harinder Singh of Faridkot was fabricated.
His daughters will now inherit the estimated US $ 3.86 billion estate, instead of a trust run by his former servants and palace officials.
Chief judicial magistrate Rajnish Kumar Sharma, in Chandigarh, Punjab, finally gave his ruling on the case filed by the Maharaja's eldest daughter, Amrit Kaur, in 1992, a court official said Monday (March 23, 2015).
The court official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
The Faridkot riches were legend on the subcontinent. The estate includes a 350-year-old fort, palaces and forests lands in Faridkot, a mansion surrounded by acres of land in the heart of India's capital, New Delhi and similar properties spread across four states.
There is also a stable of 18 cars including a Rolls Royce, a Daimler and a Bentley, all in running condition.
In addition, there is an aerodrome in Faridkot, spread over 200 acres, which is being used by the Punjab state administration and the army.
Harinder Singh himself was a boy-king who grew up amid the final gasps of Punjab’s and the subcontinent’s royal families. He was crowned Maharajah of the tiny kingdom of Faridkot in western Punjab - the last Maharajah it would turn out - at the age of three, upon his father's death.
After the British fled the subcontinent in 1947, leaving behind two newly-carved countries, India and Pakistan, Faridkot and hundreds of other small kingdoms on the east side of the India-Pakistan border -- now part of a new-created India -- were absorbed into the country, royal titles and power were abolished and the royal families were given a fixed salary from the Indian government.
That payment, the 'privy purse', too was later abolished in 1971.
Some royals slipped into penury, while some converted their former palaces into luxury hotels to provide them an income.
A few, like Harinder Singh, held onto their enormously profitable real estate and continued to live a rarefied life.
But in 1981, his only son, Tikka (Crown Prince) Harmohinder Singh, was killed in a road accident and Harinder Singh tumbled into a deep depression. It was then, his three daughters' argued, that his trusted aides connived to deprive his family of their fortune.
They set up the Meharawal Khewaji Trust, naming all the Maharajah's servants, officials and lawyers -- mostly non-Sikh, unlike the Faridkot family, which was Sikh, and not related to the royal family -- as trustees.
A short time after Harinder Singh’s death in 1989, a will leaving all his wealth to the trust became public. The two younger princesses, Deepinder Kaur and Maheepinder Kaur, were given monthly salaries of $20 and $18 respectively.
Harinder Singh's wife, mother and oldest daughter - the presumed heir - were cut off without a penny.
The trust falsely told the court that Amrit Kaur had been shunned by her father for marrying against his wishes.
Amrit Kaur told the court that her father had never made a will and that she had remained with him until his death.
In the two decades that it has taken for the court to give its ruling, much has changed. The value of the estates has increased manifold.
The New Delhi properties alone are worth about US $ 341.7 million. One of his daughters, Maheepinder Kaur, died. Amrit and Deepinder are in their 80s.
The family's lawyer told India's Financial Express that some of the fortune had been squandered away by the fraudulent ‘trustees’ during the long case.
The trust is weighing a challenge to the Chandigarh court order in a higher court, news reports said Monday.
'The will was real and it was not forged. The trust, after going through the order in detail, could challenge it in an upper court,' a lawyer for the trust told The Times of India.
[Courtesy: Daily Mail. Edited for sikhchic.com]
March 25, 2015
Conversation about this article
1: Harinder Singh 1469 (New Delhi, India), March 25, 2015, 9:52 AM.
Thanks, sikhchic.com, for covering this story. We spot the Faridkot House every second day on our way for morning tea in Mandi. Indeed, it has a lot of history to it. The very name of 'Faridkot' is loaded. There are umpteen Sikh estates like this around the country. We need to record them and preserve them because they hold so much of our heritage and cultural history.
2: Raj (Canada), March 25, 2015, 8:44 PM.
One sentence: The treachery of Hindus! They can never digest the riches of Sikhs.
3: Kaala Singh (Punjab), March 26, 2015, 12:54 AM.
@2: This was another maharaja who never had a succession plan to take care of his vast riches. Just like Ranjit Singh, he did not trust hi own, and hired outsiders to run his kingdom and gave them a free run. We see the story repeated over and over again. Why do wee keep blaming others for our own foolishness?
4: Mani Uppal (USA), March 26, 2015, 7:22 PM.
This is a crazy story. My family was lower middle class in India, and my three sisters and I, we all lived in a simple one bedroom place. My eldest sister was once coming back from engineering college in a Punjab Roadways bus, and ended up sitting next to Amrit kaur. Amrit kaur was a really nice person, and they started talking about random stuff. When the bus stopped in Chandigarh, Amrit kaur came to our house for lunch (just regular punjabi hospitality), and then she went her way. At that time, she was struggling financially, because apparently the usurpers had stolen everything. We fed her Kurrie-Chaawal just as a token of friendship, without any clue of who she really was. Even as a kid, I was suspicious that she was a princess. Why would a princess come to a poor family's house? Good to see that justice was done to her, though sadly at a very late age (she is in her 80s). Just a random story for Sikhchicers. So, a person who stopped randomly at our house is now a billionaire!
5: Sunny Grewal (Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada), March 26, 2015, 9:36 PM.
This should have been an open and shut case. There is absolutely no reason that something as simple as will fraud should take 30 years, especially in relation to the facts of this case. Only in India.
6: Syed Miraz Momin (Dhaka, Bangla Desh), August 26, 2015, 7:32 PM.
These royal family members are very unfortunate. Those cheaters must be punished soon. Hope the two princesses will regain their status and property immediately. No further appeal of the cheaters should be considered.
7: Gurdip Singh Brar (Faridkot, Punjab), September 01, 2016, 9:31 PM.
Ranjit Singh Waihniwal, the lawyer in the forged trust, has not done good to deprive the princesses of their right to the estates of the late Maharaja and so also Lal Singh who has become rich from them. Very sad. Servants of the Maharaja usurping the estates, and the rightful heirs being treated so shabbily by forgery. They must be punished by the judiciary.