HYDERABAD:
Former Miss Turkey, Princess Manoliya Onur, is back in Hyderabad to get justice
from her estranged husband, Prince Mukarram Jah Bahadur, grandson of Mir Osman
Ali Khan, the seventh Nizam and last ruler of the erstwhile princely state of
Hyderabad.
Onur,
the third of the 73-year-old prince's five wives, is fighting a legal battle to
get her 'mehr' and rights for her 15-year-old daughter
Niluofer.
Mehr
is a gift of money or valuables given or promised to be given by the groom to
the bride at the time of
marriage.
The
last time Onur, 45, was here was in 1996 to file the case against the prince,
six years after the
marriage.
While
a family court on Monday adjourned the hearing to March 23, efforts are
continuing by both sides for an out-of-court settlement.
Mukarram
Jah, who lives in Australia and Turkey and married two more women after Onur, is
reportedly in touch with her through his advisors for settling the case outside
the
court.
He
had married Onur in August 1990 and their daughter Niluofer was born in 1991.
The prince had separated from her after he married Moroccan beauty Jameela
Boularous in
1996.
"All
I want is mehr, maintenance and my daughter's rights," said Onur, a former Miss
Turkey. She declined to reveal the amount of
mehr.
The
prince had also reportedly agreed to bequeath Chiran Palace to his daughter
Niloufer.
In
this legal battle she is getting full support from wife of Sadruddin Jhaveri,
the former advisor of the
prince.
The
family court, during its next hearing, is expected to go through the report of
the advocate commissioner. Since Mukarram Jah had failed to appear in court in
previous hearings, the advocate commissioner had gone to Istanbul to record his
statement.
The
jet-setting royal has been living abroad for nearly four
decades.
Sources
close to the royal family said Mukarram Jah, known for his extravagant
lifestyle, was facing financial problems as he had sold a large part of his
property here and borrowed heavily from different
sources.
His
two palaces here are also under the control of a group of hotels because he had
failed to repay the loan taken from
them.
The
prince, whose mother Princess Durru Shehvar, daughter of last Ottoman Caliph
Abdul Majeed passed away last month, first married Esra Birgin, also Turkish, in
1959. He was then 26. The couple, who had two children, were later
divorced.
He
then married 31-year-old Helen Simmons in 1979. A one-time air hostess and BBC
drama division staffer, Helen had embraced Islam and become Ayesha. They were
separated in 1987. Ayesha, who is believed to have cost the prince a huge amount
in maintenance for the upkeep of their two sons, died in
1989.
Mukarram
Jah then tied the knot with Onur and thereafter with Jameela. He married yet
again in the late 1990s, this time to Ayesha Orchide, hailing from an
aristocratic Turkish
family.
Nizams,
as the Asaf Jahi rulers were known, ruled erstwhile Hyderbad State comprising
Telangana region of current Andhra Pradesh and parts of present-day Maharashtra
and Karnataka from 1712 to
1948.
The
princely state merged into the Indian Union in September 1948, 13 months after
India achieved independence from British.
Hyderabad
