Exclusive: ‘We Live in a Time Where Anything Can Be Politicised’ – Nagesh Kukunoor on The Hunt
The assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi remains one of the darkest days in our country’s history. The tragic event took place on May 21, 1991, at Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. Filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor‘s latest show, The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case, based on the book Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassins by Anirudhya Mitra, focuses on this crucial chapter of our country’s history. The show begins with the assassination and follows the Special Investigation Team‘s meticulous effort to nab the culprits.
Kukunoor emphasises that the show only focuses on the police procedure and steers clear of any political inclination. Talking about The Hunt, he tells Filmfare, “The show came about when Mitra approached Applause Entertainment. The head of Applause liked it and pitched it to me. One of the first things I said was I don’t want to do anything political. And he said, ‘That’s precisely why I am pitching this to you, because this is not political.’ While it is an important chapter in India’s history, the show starts with the assassination and ends with how the book concludes. It shows you all the details, but it’s purely a police procedural. A true crime thriller. It completely shies away from politics, from pointing fingers. It just shows you what happened with the special investigation team and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) members they were hunting.”
However, Kukunoor explains that it is always a challenge to adapt a non-fiction book for the screen. “This was the first time I waded into such an environment. I had two co-writers on the show, and the thing that we were constantly faced with was, are we doing right by the people we are portraying on camera? I feel we have dealt with it with an enormous amount of sensitivity and have been true to the real-life characters as best as we could. But the problem with any adaptation is that you take liberties because you weren’t physically present there at the time when these incidents happened. Even when I am directing actors, a lot of times they are making decisions, and it is a collaborative thing, but we are guessing what could have happened and how the person could have responded based on the best information we have.”
Asked whether he was, at any point, concerned about any political reaction, especially from the Gandhi family, the filmmaker says, “We live in a time where anything and everything can be politicised. You can have a sweet romantic story, a heterosexual romantic story in a lovely little town and have 50 people be pissed off. I don’t think anything comes without risk. But like I have been screaming from the rooftops – it is a crime thriller. It is a police procedure, done to the best of our abilities based on the material we have. It is not remotely meant to be a political piece.”
The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case stars Amit Sial, Sahil Vaid, Bagavathi Perumal, Girish Sharma, Abhishek Shankar, Danish Iqbal, Vidyut Gargi and Shafeeq Mustafa among others. It is streaming on Sony Liv.
Also Read: The Hunt Team on Not Politicising Rajiv Gandhi & Revisiting History | Nagesh Kukunoor | Amit Sial
