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PAKISTAN: The Cruel Begum

Fat Munawarr Jehan Begum, senior wife of the exiled Nawab of Junagadh, was being washed and dressed by three timorous maids in her Karachi mansion one Sunday morning last year. Suddenly Her Highness' jowls began to quiver. Someone, she screamed, had usurped the royal privy. The culprit proved to be 13-year-old Bano, a scared little peasant-born maid.

The Begum ordered Bano shackled tightly in the royal bedroom, and was off for a day at the race track. What happened next was related in a Karachi court by the Begum's senior maid. "She came back at 6. Bano was crying, 'Give me...

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