Shaniwar Wada

Shaniwar Wada is a fort in Pune where the ruling Peshwa Narayanrao was murdered in 1773. A popular story says his voice cries out there for help when the moon is full.

Wikipedia says the fort held a thousand or more residents by 1758. Narayanrao was the tenth Peshwa, the Maratha Empire's Prime Minister. On 30 August 1773 assassins entered the palace and killed him. Atlas Obscura says Raghunathrao, his uncle, wanted the post for himself and plotted against him; Wikipedia says guards killed Narayanrao on the orders of Raghunathrao and his wife Anandibai. Atlas Obscura records as legend a story that Anandibai altered the written order to the killers, changing it from holding Narayanrao to killing him.

James Grant Duff's A History of the Mahrattas (1826) records a ghost. Grant Duff tells of a religious attendant who said he had seen Narain Rao's ghost in a dream, and that the ghost had ordered a dinner for 100,000 Brahmins. The dinner, Grant Duff says, was provided at once.

The story told now is of a cry. Wikipedia calls it a popular legend that Narayanrao's ghost cries out for help when the moon is full, and says people working nearby have reported hearing "Kaka mala vachava", a plea to his uncle to save him. Rediff described the same full-moon cry in 2015. Wikipedia also mentions a book on the killing, titled Assassination of the Peshwa and published in English and Marathi.

Hindustan Times reported in 2020 that descendants of the Peshwas had raised maintenance problems at the fort with the ASI, which agreed that the fort urgently needed restoring.