A plaque was unveiled last month in a West London cemetery to commemorate the wife of the last independent Sikh ruler of Punjab, a formidable woman who fought two wars against the British in the 19th century.

It marks the recent discovery of a marble stone marking the final resting place in Britain of Maharani Jind Kaur, the wife of the last “Lion of Punjab”. The stone was discovered and repaired after lying for almost 80 years under tons of rubble in the Dissenters Chapel in Kensal Green, where the Maharana’s body rested briefly in 1863 before she was taken back to Bombay for cremation.

The chapel fell into ruin in the 1920s, and the catacombs and coffins were smashed by vandals. When the chapel was restored, fragments of broken marble with an inscription in Gurmukhi were discovered, and leading Sikhs in Britain raised funds to honour the Maharani.

She was a tragic figure. Born in a Punjabi village in 1817, she married the aged Maharajah of Punjab in 1835. When her husband died in 1844, she became the regent for her 6-year-old son, Duleep Singh, but was swiftly confronted by the British army that moved to her southern border in hopes of conquering one of the last independent states in northern India.

She was betrayed by two treacherous generals, and defeated after two wars, in 1845-46 and 1848-49. Her son was dethroned, made a ward of the British, converted to Christianity and exiled to England. She was imprisoned in Lahore Fort by the new British Resident and then moved from prison to prison until her escape to Nepal, disguised as a slave girl, in 1849.

Duleep Singh was adopted as a godson by Queen Victoria and feted as a handsome aristocrat by Victorian society. He did not return to India until 1860 when he finally met his mother after more than 13 years and was horrified to hear how she had been treated by the British. She was allowed to come to London in 1861 and housed in Lancaster Gate, but was a broken woman — frail, with failing eyesight, her famed beauty vanished, and “an object of commiseration”, according to Lady Login, the wife of her son’s former English guardian.

When she died in Kensington in 1863, the law prevented her cremation under Sikh tradition, and her casket was placed in the Kensal Green catacombs. Charles Dickens took up her case, writing about the “poor woman whose ashes have been squabbled over” in his weekly journal. He added: “Down here, in a coffin covered with white velvet, and studded with brass and nails, rests the Indian dancing woman whose strong will and bitter emnity towards England caused Lord Dalhousie to say of her, when in exile, that she was the only person our Government near feared”.

Duleep Singh, reconverted to Sikhism, briefly raised the flag of revolt against the British, but then repented, was pardoned and spent his last days as an English country gentleman at Elveden Hall, near Thetford, where he is buried. A statue to him was unveiled there by the Prince of Wales in 1999.