The newspapers and periodicals of the day reported extensively on the crime. Some publications even promised their readers "exclusive photographs" of Mumtaz. The issue was raised in the British House of Commons. 

In court Phanse was represented by Barrister Muhammed Ali Jinnah. Jinnah’s wife Ruttie would sit through the trial daily. During the trial, Mumtaz claimed that the real accused in the case were not being tried in court.

Eventually, Justice L.C. Crump sentenced three men—Shafi Ahmed, Captain Shamrao Dighe, and Pushpasheel Ponde, to death. Two of the nine accused were acquitted. Phanse was sentenced to transportation for life.

As a semi-sovereign ruler, Tukojirao could not be tried in a court of law like a commoner. However, the circumstances in the case went dangerously close to implicating him. These included Mumtaz’s testimony, her allegation about her child being murdered and the accused in the case being in the service of the Indore durbar, with some holding high offices. The trying judge had noted that ‘there must have been some kind of conspiracy,’ and that there were persons behind the assailants ‘whom we cannot precisely indicate’

Eventually, Ponde, who was aged around 22-23, went insane in jail and his death sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. Shafi Ahmed and Dighe were finally executed at the Dongri Jail in Bombay on the morning of 19 November 1925. Intense secrecy had been maintained around this as people would gather near the jail gates after rumours of the impending execution.

Patrick Kelly’s efforts to crack the case which had turned into the ‘talk of the country,’ had led to pressure being brought upon him from the powers that be. Indore was among the foremost princely states in India and officers of the Crown in India were not keen on disrupting the status quo. These officials feared that any action by the Bombay Police against Indore would affect the relationship of the British empire with the princely states. Kelly was an upright officer and refused to succumb to these temptations and demands. He realized that these pressures were hampering the investigations into the case and threatened to resign from his position if it continued. His warning to the Bombay Presidency government worked and the pressure on the police eased. Such was the moral fibre of police officers in those days!

At a time when there were no scientific or forensic tools available, the Bombay police cracked the Bawla murder case based on circumstantial and material evidence, and human intelligence. As investigations went, this was a masterpiece. The Bawla murder case is regarded as a landmark case in the history of the Mumbai Police.

Gradually, pressure was mounted on Tukojirao-III to step down as the ruler of Indore. However, two social reformers, 'Maharshi' Vitthal Ramji Shinde and 'Prabodhankar' Keshav Sitaram Thackeray stood by him. Prabodhankar, the father of later-day Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, wrote three books in Marathi and English on the Bawla murder case. Prabodhankar was a leading light of the non-Brahmin movement in Maharashtra and reasoned that since the Holkar’s were non-Brahmins (they belonged to the Dhangar community who are originally pastoralists), the largely Brahmin-dominated press was gunning for Tukojirao. Copies of Prabodhankar’s book ‘The Temptress’ were also distributed in the British Parliament!

Eventually, Tukojirao was given the choice of either abdicating or facing a Commission of inquiry. He eventually abdicated in 1926 and was replaced on the throne by his son Yeshwantrao-II Holkar. Incidentally, Tukojirao’s father Shivajirao too had been forced to abdicate by the British.

Mumtaz was later estranged from her family. In 1929, she launched her career as a stage singer and eventually left for Hollywood to try her luck there. Not much is known about what happened to her later. Interestingly, a silent film on her life and the Bawla episode named Kulin Kanta (1925) was produced in Bollywood.