Mahadev Shankar

Mahadev Shankar was born in 1932 in Peel Avenue, Kuala Lumpur, into a Brahmin family. His father, T. V. Mahadevan, was a former private secretary to the Chief Justice of Malaya. Growing up among friends of many races, he picked up Tamil, Malayalam, Cantonese and Malay.

He started school at Pasar Road School in 1940. The Japanese occupation interrupted his studies, and when he returned to school in 1942 he was taught Japanese. In 1943, with food in short supply, he and his brother worked at a railway workshop near Kuala Lumpur station. After the war he attended the Victoria Institution, where he was the first president of its dramatics society, played Antonio in a 1952 production of The Merchant of Venice, and was the Rodger Scholar of 1951.

He wanted to study medicine in Edinburgh, but his father steered him towards law, the family's traditional profession.

Shankar was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1955 and to the Malayan Bar in July 1956. He practised with Shearn Delamore and Company in Kuala Lumpur, becoming a partner in 1961, and worked on criminal, commercial, civil and medical negligence matters. He was legal adviser to the New Straits Times group on libel, a board member of Malaysian Airline System from 1975 to 1983 and a member of the Bar Council for many years.

In August 1983 he was appointed a judge of the High Court in Malaya and served in Johor, Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. In 1994 he was elevated to the newly created Court of Appeal, retiring in November 1997. He was advisory editor on civil procedure for Halsbury's Laws of Malaysia.

He served on three Royal Commissions of Inquiry: on reform of the laws of marriage and divorce in 1971, on the black eye injury suffered by Anwar Ibrahim in police custody in 1998, and on the V. K. Lingam video clip about judicial appointments in 2007 and 2008. In 2000 he became one of the first commissioners of the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam). After leaving the bench he worked as an arbitrator and as a consultant to law firms, taught as a visiting and adjunct professor, and chaired the board of trustees of the Gandhi Memorial Trust.

Shankar was a Hindu, born to devout parents in pre-independence Kuala Lumpur. He was a Paul Harris Fellow of Rotary International and remained closely linked to his old school, the Victoria Institution. He had two sons and a daughter.

Mahadev Shankar died on Sunday 25 October 2026, aged 94. His death was confirmed to The Edge by his son, and the paper reported on 26 October that the family had not yet finalised funeral arrangements. The cause of death was not made public. He was survived by two sons and a daughter.

Shankar is remembered as one of the most respected Malaysian judges of his generation. A large number of his written judgments are reported in the law journals, and in 2014 the Malaysian Bar gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award, with V. C. George noting that he held a record of sorts by serving on three Royal Commissions. His work on the Anwar Ibrahim and V. K. Lingam inquiries placed him at the centre of two of the most important public examinations of policing and judicial integrity in Malaysia, and he helped to shape the country's human rights commission in its first years.