India's last maharaja of Jaipur dies

Thousands of people poured into the courtyard of a sprawling palace in the western Indian city of Jaipur on Sunday to pay their last respects to Brigadier Sawai Bhawani Singh, the city's last maharaja. Singh, 79, died late Saturday in a hospital on the outskirts of New Delhi where he had spent the last two weeks, his daughter Diya Kumari said.
He had suffered from high blood pressure and a lung infection. Singh served as the maharaja or hereditary ruler of Jaipur after his father Sawai Man Singh's death in June 1970. Jaipur was one of hundreds of tiny royal kingdoms that dotted India until the country's independence from Britain in 1947.