Inspector Ganesh V. Ghote (pronounced "GO-tay")[1] is a fictional police officer who is the main character in H. R. F. Keating's detective novels. Ghote is an inspector in the police force of Bombay (now Mumbai), India.
Ghote first appeared in the novel The Perfect Murder (1964), in which his investigation of the apparent murder of the Parsi, Mr Perfect, was assisted informally by the Swedish UNESCO analyst Axel Svensson. The novel, which Keating wrote without ever having been to India, won a Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award and was adapted into a film in 1988 by Merchant Ivory.
H. R. F. Keating intended Ghote's final appearance to be in the novel Breaking and Entering (2000), in which he was reunited with Axel Svensson as he investigated a series of cat burglaries that ultimately enabled him to solve the high profile murder that was occupying the rest of his colleagues. Since that time, however, Keating has written Inspector Ghote's First Case (2008) and A Small Case For Inspector Ghote? (2009).
Ghote's father appears in the novel The Murder of the Maharajah (1980). Ghote is married; his wife, Protima, is a beautiful, spirited, and argumentative, though loving, Bengali. They have a son, Ved, invariably referred to in the earlier novels as "little Ved". In most novels, Ghote finds that he has to spend almost as much time fighting the Indian criminal justice system bureaucracy as he does in fighting criminals. He also tends to get little respect from the often rich and powerful people he must investigate in connection with his work, though in the end he typically wins the day through sheer doggedness.[2] In these characteristics, he has been compared to the American fictional detective Columbo.[3]
Ganesh Ghote's character has appeared in a movies and serials. The noted actor Naseeruddin Shah played the role of Ghote in The Perfect Murder.