In Mumbai, crime is an everyday thing. Its nature varies, and so does the scale, but the city mostly bears this aberration, often tolerating it. Yet, ever so often, there comes a case, which rattles the foundation of a society and its polity. Ninety-six years ago, on the evening of January 12, 1925, the cold-blooded murder of a wealthy businessman and young corporator of the Bombay Municipal Corporation, Abdul Kadir Bawla, and the abduction attempt of his lover Mumtaz Begum, in the posh Malabar Hill area, led to a cataclysmic chain of events that shook the colonial port city, eventually forcing Maharajadhiraja Raja Rajeshwar Sawai Shri Tukojirao Holkar III, the Maharaja of Indore, to abdicate.

This incident is at the heart of a soon-to-release book, The Bawla Murder Case: Love, Lust and Crime in Colonial India (HarperCollins India), by Dhaval Kulkarni.