On 6th September, Shah Jahan was taken severely ill at Delhi. For some time his life was despaired of. Dara attended him day and night with extreme filial piety, but he also took steps to secure his own succession. He stopped the couriers on the roads and prevented his brothers from getting true news of Court affairs. But this only aggravated the evil: the wildest rumours prevailed all over the country; the Emperor was believed to be already dead; the officers in the provinces were distracted by the prospect of an empty throne; lawless men in all parts raised their heads without fear of punishment. Two of the princes, Murad and Shuja, openly crowned themselves in their governments, Gujrat and Bengal respectively. Aurangzib after a short period of gnawing anxiety and depressing uncertainty, decided to play a subtler game. He denounced Dara as an apostate from Islam, proclaimed his own design to be merely to free the old Emperor from Dara's domination and to purge the State from non-Islamic influences, and lastly he made an alliance with Murad Bakhsh swearing on the Quran to give him all the Mughal territory from the Panjab westwards.
Meanwhile Dara had despached two armies, one under his son Sulaiman Shukoh and Mirza Rajah Jai Singh against Shuja who was advancing from Bengal, and the other under Maharajah Jaswant Singh and Qasim Khan against Aurangzib and Murad. The first army surprised and routed Shuja at Bahadurpur, opposite Benares, (14 February, 1658), and pursued him to Mungir. But Aurangzib and Murad effected a junction outside Dipalpur and crushed Jaswant's army after a long and terribly contested battle at Dharmat, 14 miles south of Ujjain (15th April). Dara sent off urgent orders recalling his son from Bihar. But his division of his forces had been a fatal mistake: Sulaiman returned from far off Bihar too late to help his father or even to save himself. Aurangzib had the immense advantage of crushing his enemies piecemeal, while his own armed strength was doubled by the league with Murad.
From Ujjain the victorious brothers pushed on to the capital. At Samugarh, 10 miles east of Agra, Dara who had issued from the city with a second army, attacked them on a frightfully hot day (29th May), was signally defeated, and fled from Agra towards Delhi and the Panjab. Aurangzib now marched on Agra, compelled his old father to surrender the fort by stopping the supply of drinking water from the Jamuna, and kept Shah Jahan strictly confined in the harem for the remainder of his life. Then, at Mathura he treacherously made Murad prisoner at a banquet (25th June), and advancing to Delhi crowned himself Emperor (21st July, 1658). Dara was chased through the Panjab and Sindh to Tatta, whence he fled to Gujrat over the Rann of Cutch, undergoing terrible hardships on the way. A second army which he raised was destroyed near Ajmir (14th March, 1659), and he was hunted by Aurangzib's generals from place to place, till he reached Dadar, at the Indian mouth of the Bolan Pass, whose chief betrayed him to Aurangzib. The captive Dara was brought to Delhi, paraded with insult through the bazar, and murdered by some slaves of Aurangzib, (30th August, 1659), who had got the Mullas to issue a sentence that according to Islamic Law Dara deserved an apostate's death. Murad Bakhsh was beheaded in Gwalior prison as a judicial punishment, on the accusation of a man whose father he had slain in Gujrat, (4th December, 1661). Dara's eldest son, Sulaim an Shukoh, was secretly done to death in the same State-prison (May, 1662.)
Meantime Sh uja had gathered together a new army and advanced beyond Allahabad to make a second attempt for the throne. But he was signally defeated at Khajwa (5th January 1659), and driven back to Bengal, whence after a two years' struggle on land and river he was forced to flee miserably to Arracan for refuge (12th May, 1660). Here he was massacred with his whole family for a plot against the Burmese king on whose hospitality he was living.
Thus all his rivals being removed from his path, Aurangzib became the undisputed sovereign of India.