The Hunt review: A bold, gripping series on Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, with not one tiring moment for the audience

As a journalist who has had a ringside view of Tamil Nadu politics, Sri Lankan politics, the civil war in Sri Lanka and the aftermath, I have always felt that things took a new turn after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991. It was during my school summer vacation when my father asked me to read that day’s morning newspaper to understand what had happened to India’s former Prime Minister. But I never thought that a decade later, I would be a journalist reporting and writing about the Rajiv Gandhi assassins, the case and the aftermath. 

The Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, the convicts, their families, their release, the developments in the court hearings and the judgments and how the hatred towards the assassins at one point of time turned into sympathy have all been part and parcel of the Tamil polity in both India and Sri Lanka. Two books - The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination: The Investigation by D R Kaarthikeyan and Conspiracy to Kill Rajiv Gandhi from CBI Files by K Ragothaman - gave me insights into the case investigation. The case, the investigation, the LTTE links, blended with Indian and Sri Lankan politics. But years later, journalist Anirudya Mitra’s book 90 days - The true story of the hunt for Rajiv Gandhi’s assassins, was a complete page turner, revealing every bit of information during the investigation and how the ‘one-eyed jack’ or Sivarasan was hunted down.

And almost 35 years after the death of Rajiv Gandhi, the seven-episode SonyLiv series based on Anirudhya Mitra’s book and directed by Nagesh Kukunoor makes a gripping watch. A bold cinematic adaptation of the book makes striking revelations. And from the very first opening shot at the phone bell sound at the Indian High Commission office in Colombo to Konanakunte, the residential suburb in Bengaluru, the making of the series brings alive all the characters with solid facts. The series runs through parallel stories - LTTE training the black tigers, Prabhakaran’s go-ahead for the three girls trained as black tigers - the stories of the hunters and the hunted. The entire series tells at one go, the painstaking and dedicated efforts taken by CBI’s team led by D.R. Karthikeyan. In the series, Amit Sial as Karthikeyan is perfect. His team members, Amit Varma played by Sahil Vaid,  as Amod Kant by Danish Iqbal, K Ragothaman by Bagavathi Perumal, Radhagovind Raju by Girish Sharma and Captain Ravindran by Vidyuth Garg flawlessly bring the investigation team to life. 

On the other side, assassins or the LTTE sympathisers involved in the conspiracy to do the dastardly attack and kill Rajiv Gandhi also make the audience get into the psyche of the character. The names of the assassins and the convicts are not new to the audience, or even the investigation and trial in the case is much known to the people. But every move by the Special Investigation Team led by Kaarthikeyan, his team’s efforts to run to Vedaranyam, Coimbatore and Bengaluru caught on camera with a gripping screenplay is a pure soul of creativity. 

Shafeeq Mustafa, as the one-eyed, chain-smoking conspirator Sivarasan, is extraordinary in his performance. His looks, the anger in his eyes when he breaks a radio as he could not connect with the bosses in Jaffna, the minute he takes out his gun - Mustafa is a complete sensation throughout the series, apart from Amit Sial. Anjana Balaji as Nalini, Gouri Padmakumar as Shubha and Shruti Jayan as Dhanu, the suicide bomber, are perfect matches for the characters they played. 

Written by Kukunoor, Rohit Banawalikar and Sriram Rajan, there is not even one tiring moment or the audience’s eyes slipping away from the screen. The camera recovered from the blast spot at Sriperumbudur, the blown-up body of a woman without the torso, and a photographer named Haribabu are the primary leads to the investigation. At one scene, when the entire SIT team, led by Amit Sial as Kaarthikeyan, walking out of a room at Malligai, the investigation office, with the assassins is nerve-wrenching. 

The dialogues - a perfect mix of Tamil, Hindi and English - combined with Kukunoor’s direction is impressive. Tapas Relia adds much flavour to every crime scene and the investigation with his soul stirring music. When a convoy of cars passes through plain empty roads or when the one-eyed Sivarasan gets to smoke cigarettes, Tapas makes it truly impressive. The curls in Sivarasan’s hair, the spectacles he sports bring him alive. The final hours of Sivarasan inside a safe house in Bengaluru and the politics played behind in the final hunt is captured perfectly by the writers and the director. 

The Hunt is true to the title when compared to Shoojit Sircar’s Madras Cafe, Mani Ratnam’s Kannathil Muthamittal and DK’s The Family Man. 

Even when the LTTE has been completely decimated and Sri Lanka has undergone a change in the past decade, the Rajiv Gandhi assassination and the motive behind it continue to remain a conspiracy, as Prabhakaran, who was named as accused number one in the case, was never caught or interrogated. 

Series: The Hunt - The Rajiv Gandhi assassination case

Director: Nagesh Kukunoor

Rating: 3.5/5

Entertainment