In 1896, the Bhutto fortune was in trouble. Highway robbers attacked Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s great grandfather, Khuda Bakhsh Bhutto, on his way back from Jacobabad. Unconscious after falling from his horse, he died within two weeks.

Khuda Bakhsh’s son and legal heir, Mir Ghulam Murtaza Bhutto, was in Kabul at this time, having fled the reach of the British Raj after murder charges were laid against him.

The Raj declared that since Mir Murtaza was an absconder of the Empire’s courts, all family possessions had to either be confiscated or destroyed. Zulfikar’s father, Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto, at eight years old, saw his house in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh — named after the deceased head of the family — burned down.

A SCANDALOUS AFFAIR

Much like those of his grandson Zulfikar, legends of Mir Murtaza’s colourful youth permeate the recollections of the Bhutto clan. American historian Stanley Wolpert in Zulfi Bhutto of Pakistan writes that, for the Bhuttos, the reason why Mir Murtaza was in Kabul was because he had had an affair with the mistress of Shikarpur’s Collector and District Magistrate, Col Alfred Hercules Mayhew.

The Bhuttos’ fortune was nearly erased by the British Raj, until a fugitive heir returned in disguise and charmed his way to a reprieve

Mayhew was a long-time British bureaucrat in Sindh. Owen Bennett-Jones notes in The Bhutto Dynasty that though he was answerable to the commissioner of Sindh in Karachi, the distance from the port city to Shikarpur was such that Mayhew became one of the most powerful individuals in the vast area.

Sindh at the time was still under the control of the Bombay Presidency, as it had been since 1848 (and lasted until 1936). Shikarpur served as a critical trade route between India and Afghanistan. Larkana — where the Bhuttos held their land — at the time was a tehsil (taluka in Sindh) of Shikarpur, but became an independent district in 1901. Today, Shikarpur comes within Larkana Division.

For the Bhuttos, the background of the woman in question shifts. For Sir Shahnawaz, she was Sindhi; for Zulfikar, she was English; and for Fatima Bhutto, perhaps Anglo-Indian. Regardless of her background, Sir Shahnawaz writes of Mir Murtaza being caught with her while the colonel pretended to be away. When found, the wadera [feudal lord] wrestled with the colonel and escaped.

This was 1892 and, in the beginning, the Bhutto and the colonel kept their separate ways.

THE VENDETTA OF THE COLONEL

However, as Wolpert writes from Sir Shahnawaz’s unpublished memoirs, Mayhew developed a vendetta against the Bhuttos for this act and, despite not acting upon it for a few years after the event, launched murder cases against Mir Murtaza. First, for the attempted murder of a police inspector in Sindh, Sher Mohammad Shah, and later for the murder of Rao Jeramdas, a revenue officer in Ratodero.

In the Rao Jeramdas murder, the evidence heavily pointed towards Mir Murtaza, according to research by Ali Bhutto, published under the title ‘Murder Ink’ in Newsline magazine. The case also held motive, since Jeramdas was preparing a report for Mayhew against the Bhuttos and Mir Murtaza had come to meet him before his submission. Allegedly, the revenue officer showed disrespect by making the wadera wait outside his office. A few days later, Jeramdas was found dead.

Mayhew became desperate. In a letter to Evan James, who was serving as the commissioner of Sindh, the colonel wanted the enforcement of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) in Shikarpur. In 1901, the infamous law prescribing collective punishment and no legal recourse had been established in what is today most of western Pakistan, including the Upper Sindh Frontier District (modern-day Jacobabad). It would have been the end of the road for the Bhuttos.

James however declined to bring more of Sindh under the FCR and asked Mayhew to pursue the existing legal apparatus available.

TRIALS AND ESCAPE

The colonel then went on the legal offensive and cases against Mir Murtaza were taking a toll on the Bhuttos’ resources. With barristers engaged from Bombay and Lahore, the legal fees in court were dear. Although acquittal was won, Mayhew filed a retrial in Bombay. Ultimately, Khuda Bakhsh asked his son to leave.

Mir Murtaza first went to Bahawalpur which, at the time, was ruled by Sadiq Mohammad Khan IV, installed by the British in 1879. Found there by British authorities and still under the legislative ire of the courts, Mir Murtaza then fled to Kabul, where the Raj could not follow.

In Kabul was Emir Abdur Rahman Khan, whom the Raj had kept friendly relations with during the second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880) against Sher Ali and his son Yakub Khan. The emir [ruler] himself had to spend years exiled in Russia before his military expertise brought him back.

Afghan emirs had not taken kindly to British interference in the past and, therefore, the Raj treated Abdur Rahman differently. When the 40 year old came to the throne in 1880, instead of dispatching a white British ambassador to Kabul, as they had done in the past, the British sent a Muslim to represent them instead.

After Abdur Rahman took over Kandahar — a Pashtun cultural capital and where his Barakzai clan had ruled — from the British in 1881, no Anglo government official was left in Afghanistan. Afghanistan had become a British Protectorate and the Raj maintained foreign affairs for the emir.

Despite his affability with the Raj, Abdur Rahman had to keep up appearances to his polity as well, several of whom were against any British influence in Afghanistan. In that vein then, foes and former friends of the British were welcome in Kabul. In his autobiography, Abdur Rahman devotes a short chapter to those he gave sanctuary, titled ‘Refugees and Exiles’, where his kingdom would give sanctuary to “those who, having fought either with Great Britain or, being discontented with the friendship of Great Britain, have come under my protection, such as Omra Khan, Mir Murad Ali and other frontier chiefs.”

Sindh was from where the British had launched the first Anglo-Afghan War in 1838. Despite the Battle of Miani (February 1843) and the Battle of Dubbo (March 1843), where the Talpur dynasty fought to protect Sindh from British expansionism, the new Sindh had essentially brought the Raj to Kabul’s doorstep.

Abdur Rahman Khan would have kept that in mind, looking to gain alliances in Sindh that could later on repel any British efforts to march back towards Kabul.

THE DISGUISE THAT SAVED THE DYNASTY

Little is known of Mir Murtaza’s time in Kabul, but what we do know is that, at the peril of losing the family fortune, his return is a nearly fantastical story.

According to Sir Shahnawaz’s memoirs, first taking funds to fight his legal cases from the Afghan emir himself, Mir Murtaza’s headed back but his boat capsized on his journey back to Sindh. Later, the wadera charmed his way to Bahawalpur, from where he not only raised more funds but now, with a collaborator, disguised himself as a Sikh labourer on a construction job for none other than the Commissioner of Sindh, Evan James, with whom he pleaded for a fair trial.

Bennett-Jones, following the case’s legal history, writes that Mir Murtaza secured acquittal during a retrial in Bombay, while Wolpert’s facsimile of Sir Shahnawaz’s memoirs says that Mayhew signed a civil judge’s orders in Dadu to restore the Bhutto’s property in 1899.

Regardless of how the Bhuttos got their lands back, the reprieve however, was fleeting.

Mir Murtaza was not the only Bhutto who had fled to Kabul. His namesake, his great-grandson endured the same fate after the judicial murder of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. For both Murtazas, family politics led to a tragic end. Exile, return and an unresolved murder.

The writer is Managing Editor, Folio Books. He can be contacted at
saeedhusain72@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 13th, 2025