Fall of the Mughal Empire v3.c42.s2.25

v3.c42.s2.25

prison without a change of clothing, and beat their servant-girls for their mistresses’ wealth. But when she asked Ghulām Qādir to hand the palace over to her now that he had collected more than the promised twelve lakhs from it, he replied that the contents of the palace treasury were the former spoils of his father’s capitals, and that her debt to him must be satisfied out of her private property. He began to beat the princes and even a sister of Shah Alam for extorting their wealth, and on 22nd August, had Mālika-i-Zamāni and Sāhiba Mahal brought away from their mansions in the city with only the clothes they were wearing and ordered them to be placed on the terrace of the Octagonal Tower, exposed to the gaze of the public on the river bank, and subjected to unslaked thirst for hours together. Their mansions were dug up and swept clear of everything found there above or below the ground by the Ruhela’s agents.