Maharani Jind Kaur imprisoned and exiled

Who: Maharani Jind Kaur, regent for her son Maharaja Duleep Singh until the Treaty of Bhairowal; the Resident Henry Lawrence and his successor Frederick Currie; Governor-General Hardinge and, from 1848, Dalhousie; and, in Nepal, the Maharaja and Jung Bahadur Rana.

What: The treaty of December 1846 took her power and gave her an allowance of 1.5 lakh rupees a year. What followed, in order:

• February 1847: a Brahmin named Prema was charged with a plot to kill the Resident and Tej Singh at the Shalamar Gardens. John Lawrence's inquiry called the evidence against the Maharani worthless though he saw grounds for suspicion, and Hardinge rejected it as inconclusive.
• 7 August 1847: at a durbar the boy Maharaja refused to apply the tilak to Tej Singh. The Resident saw the Maharani's hand in it. She was removed from Lahore, shut in the Samman Tower of the Fort, and about ten days later moved to the fort of Sheikhupura (the Encyclopaedia says September 1847), with her allowance cut to Rs 48,000.
• Mid-1848: after a plot to tamper with the loyalty of the troops came to light, the Resident, on Dalhousie's instructions, deported her from the Punjab to Benares, her baggage searched and her jewels taken. Khushwant Singh records that the Resident admitted legal proof against her might not be obtainable, and the Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says the charges could not be substantiated. Her allowance fell to Rs 12,000. Sources date the deportation to May, June or July 1848.
• 6 April 1849: after letters to Mulraj and Chattar Singh were intercepted, she was moved to Chunar fort. She escaped in disguise as a servant, about 18 April, and reached Kathmandu on 29 April 1849, where Jung Bahadur Rana and the Maharaja gave her asylum. The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism says the British confiscated her jewellery and stopped her pension.

Where: The Lahore Fort, Sheikhupura, Benares, Chunar and Kathmandu.

Why it mattered: Khushwant Singh writes that Khalsa soldiers called her the Mother of the Khalsa and that the Resident reported them disturbed by her removal. Dalhousie wrote that she had the only manly understanding in the Punjab. She left Nepal in 1860, was reunited with her son and taken to England, and died at Kensington, London, on 1 August 1863.