Nagesh Kukunoor to direct crime procedural on Rajiv Gandhi murder case

The assassination of India’s former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was one of the darkest moments in our political history. The young politician was killed on May 21, 1991, at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu when Thenmozhi Rajaratnam aka Dhanu – a member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ( LTTE ) – turned into a human bomb and blew herself up. Apart from the man who was her target, 18 other people lost their lives in this suicide attack. [caption id=“attachment_11202071” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Anirudhya Mitra[/caption] Why did the LTTE choose an election rally to carry out their deadly plan? What had Rajiv Gandhi done to antagonize the LTTE chief Velupillai Prabhakaran, and how did he have to pay for the Indian Peace Keeping Force’s role in the Sri Lankan Civil War? Why was Dhanu chosen as the face of the conspiracy when the mastermind behind it was a man named Sivarasan? Journalist-writer-filmmaker Anirudhya Mitra has written a non-fiction book titled _Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassin_s (2022), exploring these questions in great detail based on his extensive reportage during the investigation process.   [caption id=“attachment_6531151” align=“alignnone” width=“1200”] Filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor[/caption] Director Nagesh Kukunoor and producer Elahe Hiptoola of Kukunoor Movies are gearing up to make a web series based on this book for Applause Entertainment. While details about the cast and the crew as well as budgets are still under wraps, Applause Entertainment did send out a press release announcing that they have acquired the rights to adapt Mitra’s book. In this official statement, Kukunoor said, “I look forward to taking on this gritty and thrilling piece of storytelling, adapted from Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassins. It has always been an enriching and creatively satisfying experience collaborating with Applause Entertainment and excited to see how this one unfolds.” The series will be “a crime procedural” called Trail of An Assassin. It promises to be “a blow-by-blow account of how the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)’s Special Investigation Team cracked the assassination plot”, identified the people involving in the murder of India’s former Prime Minister, and then chased the mastermind of the plan to his final hideout. Kukunoor and Hiptoola have collaborated on films like _Hyderabad Blues_ (1998), Rockford (1999), Bollywood Calling (2001), 3 Deewarein (2003), Iqbal (2005), Dor (2006), Aashayein (2010), Lakshmi (2014) Dhanak (2016) and, most recently, on the web series Modern Love Hyderabad (2022). Kukunoor has worked with Applause Entertainment on another series titled City of Dreams, which is currently streaming on Disney+Hotstar. It has two seasons. Why has Applause Entertainment taken up this project? Sameer Nair, the company’s CEO, said, “Driven and guided by our values of being ambitious, audacious and disruptive, we believe the adaptation of Anirudhya Mitra’s book makes for a compelling story to tell. Most are aware of this incident through the medium of news and will now get a dramatized insider view of the largest manhunt in Indian history. We are pleased to once again collaborate with Nagesh Kukunoor to bring this gut-wrenching story to a contemporary audience.” Applause Entertainment seemed like the natural choice for Mitra for this adaptation because it was Nair who had nudged him to write this book in the first place. Over email, Mitra said, “I had met Sameer a few years ago to pitch some ideas for television. During that meeting, I had told him about all the reporting that I had done around the Rajiv Gandhi murder case and how badly I wanted to give it the shape of a book. He really encouraged me to do it.” This book was eventually published by HarperCollins India. When we reached out to Swati Chopra, Associate Publisher at HarperCollins India, she said that the book was commissioned since Mitra was among the few journalists of his time tracking the investigation into the assassination right from day one for India Today magazine. She added, “The book covers the hunt for the assassins, which was filled with unpredictable twists and turns, and it was spread roughly over 90 days – from the day the case was handed to the CBI’s Special Investigation Team on 22 May 1991 to the day the mastermind and other assassins were discovered dead by suicide at their hideout on 20 August 1991.” Since the adaptation is in the development phase, Applause Entertainment declined to comment on the money that they have paid to acquire the rights, the number of seasons, the streaming platform that this series will be available on, and the language(s) it will be shot in. Mitra, however, confirmed that he will be involved as a consulting writer/advisor to the series. He refrained from talking about his dream cast because “this is entirely the prerogative of the director and the producer.” He added, “I am quite tied up writing several web series for platforms like Hotstar, SonyLiv and Amazon Mini but I will be available 24x7 for the series Trail of An Assassin, for whatever services the director or the producer needs from me.” Mitra revealed that in 1998, when he was producing the television series Sea Hawks directed by Anubhav Sinha, Zarina Mehta – his then boss at UTV – had read his journalistic work on the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. She had told Mitra that they must be made into a series. He is thrilled that his “decades-old dream” is coming true, especially with Kukunoor as director. “Nagesh knows how to get under the skin of his characters. When you are creating a series for a streaming platform, it is very important to focus on characterization because audiences are emotionally invested in the characters that they follow over several episodes,” said Mitra. He is excited about the crime procedural as a genre because it will “take the audience through the journey that the CBI investigators, forensic experts, Tamil Nadu police, the intelligence agencies, the NSG black cat commandos had gone through while cracking the case and tracking down the mastermind of the assassination – Sivarasan – known as ‘One-eyed Jack’.” Applause Entertainment has produced other adaptations. Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story, streaming on SonyLiv, is based on Sucheta Dalal and Debashish Basu’s book The Scam: Who Won, Who Lost, Who Got Away. The series Hello Mini, available on MXPlayer, is based on Novoneel Chakraborty’s Stranger trilogy. Avrodh: The Siege Within, streaming on SonyLiv, is based on Shiv Aroor and Rahul Singh’s book India’s Most Fearless. Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist and educator tweeting @chintanwriting Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.