Indian princesses win £2.5 billion inheritance after epic battle over father's will His three daughters, widow and elderly mother had expected to inherit his estate, but found instead he had left a 'will' giving it all to his army of staff and retainers through a trust established for their exclusive benefit. The daughters were given positions as officers of the 'Meharwal Khewaji Trust', created under the terms of his surprise will, and nominal salaries of between £12 and £15 pounds a month. The three surviving sisters launched a legal action to challenge the will in 1992, three years after their father's death, which eventually took 21 years to resolve. One of the sisters, Maheepinder Kaur, died of heart failure, aged 62, at her home in Mashobra in 2002. Her two surviving older sisters, Amrit Kaur and Deepinder, known as 'Princess Bunty,' will now share the inheritance as new billionaires, although sources close to the family said it will not greatly change their lifestyles. They are both in their seventies and continued to live in some luxury after they married. Deepinder Kaur has been the 'Maharaniadirani of Burdwan', near Calcutta, since she married the heir of the Burdwan princely state in 1959. Her husband is Maharajadhiraja Dr Saday Chand Mehtab whose father owned the Jahangir Diamond - the celebrated 83 carat stone which was once set in the beak of one of the Mughal peacock thrones. He sold it at auction in London to make the family even richer. Neither sister has lived in hardship as they fought for their rightful inheritance. "They are very well-off indeed and have been having a good life," said a source close to the case who said the sisters are determined to protect their privacy following their victory. Many of the properties and estates are believed to have fallen into neglect and disrepair since the Meharwal Khewarji Trust took control of them. Revenue officials launched a long investigation into the estate at Mashobra to establish its ownership and found it had been illegally transferred to the trust. Last week a Chandigarh magistrate ruled that the sisters had been cheated out of their inheritance by their late father's staff in collusion with local lawyers who forged a will several years before he died in 1989. "We have won the case after 21 years," their advocate Vikas Jain exclaimed to the news agency AFP as he celebrated a landmark victory. Yesterday he declined to comment further after the two sisters informed him they would not be making any further statements. Their victory marks the end of a series of bitter legal battles over the vast riches of several Indian royal families. The dispute between the grandchildren of the late Gyatri Devi, the Rajmata of Jaipur, and their relatives over their father's £250 million estate, is still in the courts 16 years after it began. The Faridkot royals have a long history of losing and regaining their estate dating back to the Sikh Wars. The family are descendants of desert rulers in Rajasthan who established two rival princely states in Punjab, both of which were seized by the Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1807. The family allied with the British East India Company, which restored their estates to them two years later. The family played key roles in supporting the British in the Sikh Wars, the 1857 Indian Mutiny and the Afghan War. The late Maharaja Sir Harinder Singh Brar, a senior officer who served in the Deccan Horse cavalry regiment, was regarded as one of the more astute of the former Indian royals who had managed to retain his wealth after India's independence stripped them of their power.