The Hunt Misses Nothing

By Pickle July 26, 2025

Nagesh Kukunoor hits all the right buttons in the psychologically deep SonyLIV crime investigation drama centred on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination

Saibal Chatterjee

The SonyLIV show arrived without much fanfare. It had no big-name star in a cast spearheaded by the ever-reliable Amit Sial. But The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case, created, co-written and directed by Nagesh Kukunoor, instantly found its rightful place among the finest web shows made in India this year, alongside the critically acclaimed prison drama Black Warrant.

Produced by Applause Entertainment (which also made Black Warrant) and Kukunoor Movies, The Hunt, bolstered by solid research and meticulous period detailing, follows the 90-day investigation of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in a suicide bombing at a political rally on May 21, 1991, in Tamil Nadu’s Sriperumbudur.

The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case strikes a fine balance between the terror conspiracy and the diligent probe into one of the most shocking crimes ever committed on Indian soil. The result is a riveting that thriller eschews the tropes of police procedurals.

The Hunt is an intense, focused and impeccably structured blow-by-blow account of an investigation that found answers to many questions and yet left just as many political conundrums unanswered. Such was the nature of the crime and its ramifications on the subcontinent that nothing that met the eye was straightforward, which made the work of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that much more challenging.

Although there is no dearth of action in the show, The Hunt steers clear of the temptation to chase visceral thrills, staying steadfast in its quest of a realistic, unadorned approach to the act of policing in the face of complex geopolitical dimensions of the inquest.

Playing out primarily across three months, The Hunt uses archival footage and documented interviews and details to follow the circumstances in which the suicide bombing was planned and the subsequent investigation, a gnarled web of conflicting signals, frayed tempers and false alarms, was conducted.

The show brings out the human facets of both the LTTE militants and the hard-nosed investigators and informs the cat-and-mouse game between the two groups without ever losing sight of the gravity of the fraught probe.

The show has a cast of actors, and not stars. They skillfully subsume their own personalities and flesh out the high-profile investigators who handled the case to nab the killers of Rajiv Gandhi. The subdued and always convincing characterizations give the seven-episode series a level of authenticity that usually eludes glamour-intensive productions.

Policing in The Hunt is no flashy, triumphal exercise but an unenviable slog that tests the patience and endurance of the men involved, who spend hours in the field or struggle to found time for sleep and relaxation. They are engaged in a race against time and The Hunt unfailingly captures the urgency of their high-pressure assignment.

Adapted from journalist Anirudhya Mitra’s book Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassins, the show resorts to no dramatic grandstanding although it loses no opportunity to squeeze every ounce of tensile energy out of the big confrontation and psychologically charged scenes. Intrigue and suspense go hand in hand as the show inches its way towards a crescendo.

Amit Sial fleshes out D.R. Karthikeyan, chief of the SIT set up by the government of the then Indian Prime Minister Chandrashekhar (played by Vishwajeet Pradhan), to absolute perfection. Not a move that the actor makes feels out of place.

He is admirably supported by Sahil Vaid as the 1978 batch IPS officer, Amit Verma, who was included in the investigation team because of his police skills as well as his knowledge of Tamil. In a meaty role that gives full rein to his abilities as an actor, Vaid is delivers a flawless performance.

Another actor in The Hunt who stands out is Bhagavathi “Bucks” Perumal as the seasoned CBI officer K. Ragothaman, who served the SIT with distinction and made several crucial breakthroughs in the investigation.

The most striking aspect of The Hunt script, written by Kukunoor, Rohit Banawlikar and Sriram Rajan, is that its spotlight is never so much on the individuals as on the painstaking process that they are a part of. Free of declamatory pronouncements, the deeds and the words of the SIT members come across as what they really would have been – an exacting, near-thankless search for the truth.

The Hunt has its share of passages that reveal the difficulties of chasing shadows across a landscape where the LTTE operatives could easily merge with the milieu and make themselves almost impossible to identify and nail.

The LTTE militants on the radar of the investigators are key characters in the story. They are led by the one-eyed mastermind Sivarasan, portrayed powerfully by Shafeeq Mustafa. Their movements across the state and elsewhere provide the series some of its most gripping moments as well as create dramatic silos that explore the ethics of the investigation and the attritional mind games that were an integral part of it.

When a former IPKF man Ravindran (Vidyut Gargi) joins the investigative team, the probe takes a grave turn with soldier resorting to means that do not necessarily reflect the style of the police and CBI officers manning the SIT.

The Hunt, replete with conflict points that add layers to the narrative contribute to make it consistently watchable, marks a welcome return to form for the maker of Hyderabad Blues, Rockford and Iqbal.