In the end, it was not British steel that undid him, but a friend’s treachery. Man Singh, the Raja of Narwar, had taken him in. On 7 April 1859, acting on Man Singh’s information, British troops surrounded Tatya Tope as he rested in the Paron forest. He was carried to Sipri, today’s Shivpuri, tried hastily by a military commission, and denied any real defence. On 18 April 1859, he walked to the scaffold with a composure that unsettled even his captors and was hanged. He was forty-five.
