MAHARAJAH OF TIKARI.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 3, 3 December 1931, Page 10

MAHARAJAH OF TIKARI.

PRIVY COUNCIL APPEAL DISMISSED. The Maharajah of Tikari’s appeal to the Privy Council has been dismissed. The chief point of the Maharajah of Tikari’a appeal against the Maharanee’s claim of an annual allowance of 16,000 rupees was that his wife’s divorce "in New South Wales in 1906 from an American actor, George Stillwell, whom she married in Capetown in 1903, was invalid because the latter was not domiciled there. She was an Australian actress named Thompson, but after her divorce in Sydney pro-, fessed Hinduism, and adopted the name of Sita Devi. She married the Maharajah of Tikari in Lucknow.- In 1917 he executed a deed granting Sita and her heirs an annuity in perpetuity. Payments were stopped in 1921. lne Maharajah pleaded at an Indian trial in 1923 that his wife’s divorce was fraudulent and collusive. A Judge upheld the invalidity of the divorce, arid, therefore, the marriage of the Maharajah was declared invalid. The Indian High Court, however, decided in favour of Sita.