Ram Shastri Prabhune

Ram Shastri Prabhune was chief justice of the Maratha state and found the man then holding power guilty of murder, which is why he is remembered two and a half centuries later. He came from a poor Brahmin family near Mahad, walked to Varanasi to study, and returned to be appointed nyayadhish - the head of the judicial branch - under Balaji Bajirao. He held it under four Peshwas. When Narayanrao was killed in the palace at Pune in August 1773 and Raghunathrao took the office, it was Prabhune who conducted the enquiry. He found that Raghunathrao had procured the death, and pronounced it publicly to the man himself; asked what penance would clear it, he answered that nothing short of death would, and when Raghunathrao would not accept that, Prabhune resigned rather than serve him and went home to his village. He came back only when the Barbhai council removed Raghunathrao. Nana Fadnavis consulted him for the rest of his life. In Maharashtra his name is shorthand for judicial independence in the way that particular judges elsewhere stand for the idea that law binds the powerful; schools and law prizes carry it, and the scene of the verdict is a staple of Marathi theatre. He is said to have refused gifts throughout his career and to have lived on his salary alone. His judgments were recorded and some survive in the Peshwa daftar. A 1944 Marathi film about him was among the earliest to dramatise the verdict. He served as nyayadhish for roughly three decades in all, under Balaji Bajirao, Madhavrao I, Narayanrao and the Barbhai regency.

• Lived: 1720 CE – 1789 CE
• Nationality: Indian
• Roles: politician