IMAGINE HYDERABAD...

But today marks the end of a 60-year row between India, Pakistan and more than a hundred illegitimate descendants of an eccentric maharajah over £30million left in a British bank account.

The dispute dates back to 1948, before the partition of India, when then it was still a collection of princely states and British-run territory.

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Maharaja: The last Nizam of Hyderabad, Fath Jang Nawab Mir Osman Ali Khan Asaf Jah VII, who nominally ruled the state until 1948, a year after India gained independence from Britain

The Nizam of Hyderabad, a maharajah of fabled wealth, deposited a million pounds with the National Westminster Bank in London as he dithered over which of the two new nations to join.

As the Muslim ruler of an Indian territory the size of England and Scotland, he was attracted by the idea of joining the new state of Pakistan.

But with landlocked Hyderabad hundreds of miles away from the Islamic state that posed problems.

While he procrastinated, his finance minister signed over £1million in 1948 to a NatWest bank account of the Pakistan high commissioner to London.

Appalled, and under pressure from India, the Nizam cabled the bank to freeze the transaction.

Soon afterwards, in September 1948, Indian troops annexed Hyderabad.

The story would be just a footnote in the tragic and traumatic history of the partition of British India were it not for the fact that the money remains locked in the London bank.

But today, hopes were raised that the fortune - now expected to have grown to about £30million - may be retrieved, after India said it would negotiate an out-of-court settlement with Pakistan and the descendants of the Nizam.

In 1957, after several rounds of litigation between the Nizam and the Pakistani government, the case reached Britain's House of Lords, which ruled that the account could only be unfrozen with the agreement of all the parties.

"Some tentative sort of understanding was arrived at, but because of a time lag, that could not be implemented and so we are re-starting the negotiation process," Kapil Sibal, Indian minister for science and technology, told reporters.The negotiations would be conducted over 18 months, including the Nizam's grandson, now living in Istanbul in a small apartment after losing much of the family fortune.

The legal imbroglio has been complicated by the late Nizam's past promiscuity - he is reported to have impregnated 86 of his mistresses, siring more than 100 illegitimate children and a sea of rival claimants.

"So how much should the private beneficiary get and then what should be the distribution between the government of India and Pakistan will be negotiated," Sibal said.

A frail, devout Muslim, the Nizam was such a miser that he reportedly wore a tattered fez for 35 years, wore crumpled pyjamas and ate all his meals off a tin plate.

During his lifetime, trucks loaded with gold ingots lay rusting while his jewellerycollection was said to be so large the pearls alone could fill many rooms.