Malhar Rao Gaekwad was the eleventh Maharaja of

Baroda State Baroda State was a state in present-day Gujarat, ruled by the Gaekwad dynasty of the Maratha Confederacy from its formation in 1721 until its accession to the newly formed Dominion of India in 1949. With the city of Baroda (Vadodara) as its c ...

reigning from 1870 to 1875. He was the sixth son of Sayaji Rao Gaekwad II and became

Maharaja Mahārāja (; also spelled Maharajah, Maharaj) is a Sanskrit title for a "great ruler", "great king" or " high king". A few ruled states informally called empires, including ruler raja Sri Gupta, founder of the ancient Indian Gupta Empire, an ...

of Baroda after the death of his elder brother, Malhar Rao -I Gaekwad.

Reign

Malhar Rao spent money liberally on prostitutes, nearly emptying the Baroda coffers (he commissioned a pair of solid gold cannon and a carpet of pearls, among other expenses) and soon reports reached the Resident of Malhar Rao's gross tyranny and cruelty. Malharrao further attempted to cover up his deeds by poisoning the British Resident at Baroda,

Robert Phayre Colonel Robert Phaire, (1619?–1682), was an officer in the Irish Protestant and then the New Model armies and a Regicide. He was one of the three officers to whom the warrant for the execution of Charles I was addressed, but he escaped severe ...

, brother of

Lieutenant General Lieutenant general (Lt Gen, LTG and similar) is a three-star military rank (NATO code OF-8) used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages, where the title of lieutenant general was held by the second-in-command on the ...

Arthur Purves Phayre Sir Arthur Purves Phayre (7 May 1812 – 14 December 1885) was a career British Indian Army officer who was the first Commissioner of British Burma, 1862–1867, Governor of Mauritius, 1874–1878, and author. His brother, Sir Robert Phayre (18 ...

with a compound of

arsenic Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in combination with sulfur and metals, but also as a pure elemental crystal. Arsenic is a metalloid. It has various allotropes, but ...

. By order of the

Secretary of State for India His (or Her) Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for India, known for short as the India Secretary or the Indian Secretary, was the British Cabinet minister and the political head of the India Office responsible for the governance of th ...

Lord Salisbury Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (; 3 February 183022 August 1903) was a British statesman and Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom three times for a total of over thirteen y ...

, Malharrao was deposed on 10 April 1875 and exiled to

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

, where he died in obscurity in 1882.

References

External links

BARODA
1831 births 1882 deaths Maharajas of Vadodara {{India-royal-stub