Prachanda Raj ‘Anil’ was one of the most prominent Supreme Court judges Nepal has had so far. He was appointed a Supreme Court judge on 9 July 1986. Since then, all his verdicts were guided by the need to provide justice, irrespective of the risks and threats that might bring his way. “My father vowed to provide justice, even if doing so put a price on his head,” says Arun Raj Maskey. Prachanda Raj was indeed fearless. During Nepal’s panchayat regime, he was an official of the then Regional Court. However, he didn’t refrain from delivering verdicts that were against the Panchayat system. He was once presented with a case of an individual against the ruling class. He declared the individual to be innocent and that pitted him firmly against the then autocratic rulers. “My siblings and I were just kids back then, but we still remember the day he announced that verdict,” says Arun. “There are many other incidents, that we cannot quite recall in detail, where we knew his verdicts made him unpopular with the regime,” adds his brother Pawan Raj Maskey.

It was the same principle that guided Prachanda Raj while investigating the mysterious death of Madan Bhandari, a political leader of the then Communist Party of Nepal (CPN), in 1993. Currently, his death is an unsolved case, but the Prachanda Raj-led investigation had declared it to have been an unfortunate accident. This announcement had gotten him on the bad books of the then CPN.

Pawan remembers the tough days that followed after his father delivered the verdict. He says it was a scary time for the family. “We had to endure a lot of physical, mental, and emotional trauma for quite a while,” he says, adding that there were times when their neighbors alerted them of goons surrounding their house, looking for opportunities to harm them. He recalls the day when some people from the media had come to interview his father and their cameras were vandalized. “We all knew it was the party showing their dismay with the verdict,” he says. After all that he did to provide justice to the innocent, Arun says he is dismayed that the Nepal government didn’t give his father his due. Prachanda Raj was appointed the additional judge of the Supreme Court in 1986. He was, apparently, in line to become the Supreme Court chief justice. Unfortunately, the position was dismissed by former Chief Justice Bishwonath Upadhyaya when he was the chairman of 1990 constitution drafting. “My father was terribly upset about it. He actually never got over it,” says Arun. But that didn’t deter his generous spirit. His sons remember him as a kind and gentle man. He was already ready to help anyone in need. If someone came knocking at their door for monetary help, their father did all that he could to help that person, they say. “We remember him handing away his jewelry if he didn’t have cash when someone asked for financial assistance,” says Pawan. The 91-year-old breathed his last on 5 Dec 2022 in the city he was born in: Kathmandu. He is survived by his wife and five children. Birth: November 1931, Kathmandu Death: 5 Dec 2022, Kathmandu