Omichund

Omichund, Omichand, or Umichand (, ; died 1767) was a merchant and broker during the Nawabi period of Bengal. He was one of the principal authors of the conspiracy against Siraj-ud-Daulah and associated with the treaty negotiated by Robert Clive before the Battle of Plassey in 1757.

Biography Omichand's actual name was Amir Chand and he was from a Punjabi Khatri Sikh background. He had long been resident at Calcutta (Kolkata), where he had acquired a large fortune by providing the investment for the British East India Company, and also by acting as intermediary between the English and the local court at Murshidabad. In a letter of William Watts of later date, he is represented as saying to the Nawab (Siraj ud-Daulah): He had lived under the English protection these forty years; that he never knew them once to break their agreement, to the truth of which he took his oath, by touching a Brahman's foot; and that if a lie could be proved in England upon any one, they were spit upon and never trusted.

Lord Clive testified and defended himself thus before the House of Commons of Parliament on 10 May 1773, during the Parliamentary inquiry into his conduct in India: