A movie, a book and now another movie. Two people are in prison for the murders of Aarushi Talwar and Hemraj Banjade in 2008 and yet, the Noida killings continue to stir the blood seven years later.
"V" comes before "w" in the alphabet just as surely as Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar has been inspired by the killings of Talwar and Banjade on May 15, 2008, in Noida, near Delhi. Talvar’s October 2 release follows Manish Gupta’s film Rahasya earlier this year and the recent publication of Aarushi, journalist Avirook Sen’s account of the investigation and trial that convicted the teenager’s parents, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar.
Talvar has been written by filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj and offers three points of view on the murder and investigation. Shivek A Trehan, the Talwars' lawyers, told Scroll.in that while he hadn’t watched Talvar, members of the Talwar family had, and they were “more or less okay with it, if not completely sold”. Trehan added that the script had been shown to him, and he found it to be “well researched”.
The filmmakers met the Talwars during the course of their research. “We did meet with Vishal and others, but after they had their script ready,” Trehan said. “Our meetings with them were more about the Talwars’ approval and legal issues. We were, of course, always there to answer all their queries and show them documents relating to the case, but since the film presents several perspectives, the main script was already in place.” The family was shown the film in June on the condition that no portion would be changed even if they disapproved, since they had already read the screenplay. Priti Shahani, president of Junglee Pictures, the Bennett and Coleman Company Limited’s film production arm that has co-produced Talvar along with Vishal Bhardwaj Pictures, did not respond to requests for an interview.
Talvar is only the newest true crime movie based on a beehive-stirring case whose principal players have not yet exhausted their right to legal recourse. Rajesh and Nupur Talwar have filed an appeal against their conviction that is yet to be heard by the Allahabad High Court.
For generations, cynical journalists have followed the maxim "If it bleeds, it leads”, an acknowledgement of the human appetite for sensational crimes. That precept seems to holds as much sway in film studios. True crime movies hold out the promise of introspection, the unvarnished truth and a definitive analysis of the motives of the key players. Such projects usually see the filmmaker absorbing the multiple functions of investigator, psychologist, judge and even in some cases God. However, some filmmakers who dig for screenplays at the graveyards of prime-time scandals frequently fail to own up to the source of their inspiration. When a true crime movie source is undisguised, the knives are quick come out, usually in the form of a restraining order.
The debate about whether books and films should tackle matters that are sub-judice is being constantly redefined. Books about ongoing cases usually go into press only after being put through intense legal scrutiny, such as Sen’s Aarushi and Meenal Baghel’s Death in Mumbai, which looks at the sensational murder of Neeraj Grover in 2008, just days before the Noida deaths.
However, the benchmark is higher for movies, which are deemed to have a wider reach and the potential to shape the minds of judges more persuasively than a brilliant legal argument. Take, for instance, Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday, an adaptation of Husain Zaidi’s investigative account of the March 1993 bomb blasts in Mumbai. Though it was ready in 2004, its release was delayed by three years after some of the accused argued that the thriller would prejudice their legal appeal, since it shows them as having committed acts they denied they had anything to do with. The Supreme Court agreed to allow Black Friday to be released only after the verdict in the blasts trial had been declared.
“We felt that the movie would prejudice the cause, since people would go on the basis of whatever was shown,” said lawyer Farhana Shah, who has represented over 80 of the accused, including the group of petitioners in this case. “Movies and television have a strong impact on people, and can create doubts in the mind of the courts – seeing is more impactful than reading.”
Among India's best-known true crime films was RK Nayyar’s 1963 movie Yeh Rastey Hai Pyaar Ke, based on the Nanavati murder case four years earlier. KM Nanavati, a Navy commander, shot dead Prem Ahuja, his British wife Sylvia’s lover, and then surrendered. He was initially declared innocent by a jury possibly seduced by the relentless campaign waged in Nanavati’s favour by the tabloid Blitz. “None did more to make a routine murder trial into a classic story of Bombay’s bourgeois life than the Blitz,” writes Princeton historian Gyan Prakash.
A mistrial was declared and Nanavati was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court. However, he was pardoned in 1961. By the time Yeh Rastey Hai Pyaar Ke was released, Nanavati and his family had decamped to Canada, never to return. But the initial verdict prompted the government to abolish the jury system.
Don’t judge the judges
Supreme Court senior advocate Sanjay Hegde noted that judges "are more impervious to social influence than is feared". He said, “Judges are trained to know that movies are fiction and they must only look at the reality before them.”
In 2013, Hegde represented Muthulakshmi, the wife of sandalwood smuggler Veerappan when she protested against a Tamil biopic on the outlaw called Vanayudham (Battle of the Forest). Muthulakshmi was awarded a Rs 25 lakh compensation package, and the producer removed a line stating that Vanayudham was based on a true story.
The larger question, Hegde pointed out, is not whether movies influence judgments, but whether they violate privacy norms. Privacy has been a significant casualty as the speed of news gathering and transmission has accelerated in recent years. In the case of scandalous crimes, it has become increasingly common to announce a movie adaptation within weeks, if not days, as is the case with the Sheena Bora murder. The case has not yet gone to trial, but the press release announcing a movie adaptation has gone out – producer Manees Singh, who has bankrolled the Tamil movie Welcome to Chennai, has indicated that he is working on hard on bringing to the screen a “story of high society love, scandal, deceit, lies, murder and financial embezzlement all rolled into one that is unfurling right before our own eyes and is one that would put any Sherlock Holmes thriller to shame”. According to the press release, Singh has hired three researchers and commissioned “two of Bollywood’s best script writers” to “immediately start work”.
Reality television actor and item song performer Rakhi Sawant has also announced that her next movie, Ek Kahani Julie Ki, has been inspired by Bora’s murder, which was allegedly planned and executed by Bora’s mother, former television channel head Indrani Mukerjea.
Headlines to screenplays
The list of headline-to-screenplay titles includes Jagmohan Mundhra’s Bawander, based on the gang-rape of social worker Bhanwari Devi in Rajasthan in 1992, and Ram Gopal Varma’s Not a Love Story, based on the Neeraj Grover case, in which navy officer Emile Jerome Mathew was convicted of killing Grover for allegedly having seduced Jerome’s fiancée, television actor Maria Susairaj.
Ram Gopal Varma, an expert practitioner of the art of directing and producing fiction based on fact, was pilloried for his sleaze-filled narrative, especially by Grover’s anguished father, who did not file a case but spoke out at length against the project to journalists.
In the case of Rahasya, the 2014 production was cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification, but was held back by a petition from the Talwars pleading that its release would prejudice their appeal. The movie was cleared after a screening was arranged for members of the Talwar family, who recorded their dissent against its content.
Director Manish Gupta’s police procedural bears superficial similarities with the Noida case (it is styled as an Agatha Christie-style mystery, down to the climax in which the lead investigator assembles the dramatis personae in one room for the big revelation). But Gupta did borrow details from the 2008 murders: the teenager is found on her bed with her throat slit, as was Aarushi; the parents are doctors; the domestic worker is missing. Unsubstantiated allegations of unfaithful parents, which were among the lurid rumours that clung to the Talwars in the early phases of the investigation, are proven to be true by Rahasya.
Among the better-known examples of films that have fictionalised a high-profile case without leaping over legal hurdles is No One Killed Jessica, based on the murder of Jessica Lall in Delhi in 1999. Rajkumar Gupta made the movie after the accused, Manu Sharma, was convicted by the Supreme Court of having shot dead model and celebrity bartender Lall when she refused to serve him a drink. Gupta faced challenges of a non-legal kind while writing his screenplay. “The case had been widely reported and everyone had his or her version,” he said. “There was reality and then there was hearsay. The challenge was to not be affected by this, but to be true to the case as well as be sensitive to the tragedy without getting overwhelmed by the material.”
Gupta’s version recreates the murder and focuses on its ramifications through characters based on Jessica Lall’s sister, Sabrina (played by Vidya Balan), and a news anchor (Rani Mukerjee), who is a composite of several influential faces on prime-time television. “I wanted to bring out Sabrina’s struggle, as well as the fact that the media came through positively in this case, for once,” Gupta said.
There would be many more such true crime explorations, biopics, and movies based on historical incidents if it were not for the fear of litigation, Gupta said. “I can’t make a film the way I want to because even before I think of making it, there will be ten PILs [public interest litigations] and harassment to the producers,” he said. “Many more subjects would have existed if it wasn’t for this problem.”
If legal hurdles are a given in true crime adaptations, why don’t filmmakers simply wait for a final verdict before rushing to the sets? One reason is that the glacial pace of the Indian judicial system ensures that a hot story loses its sizzle by the time the process of appeals has been completed.
The competitive media reporting of sensational crimes ensures that between strategically planted police leaks and the first trial hearing, the public has already formed its views on who did what, how and why. In a society ruled by a suspicion of authority figures, especially the police, and the unshakeable perception that a favourable court ruling can be purchased like a car, the true crime film offers a false sense of closure. It suggests that “The End” is actually in sight, which is not always the case in real life.
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"V" comes before "w" in the alphabet just as surely as Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar has been inspired by the killings of Talwar and Banjade on May 15, 2008, in Noida, near Delhi. Talvar’s October 2 release follows Manish Gupta’s film Rahasya earlier this year and the recent publication of Aarushi, journalist Avirook Sen’s account of the investigation and trial that convicted the teenager’s parents, Rajesh and Nupur Talwar.
Talvar has been written by filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj and offers three points of view on the murder and investigation. Shivek A Trehan, the Talwars' lawyers, told Scroll.in that while he hadn’t watched Talvar, members of the Talwar family had, and they were “more or less okay with it, if not completely sold”. Trehan added that the script had been shown to him, and he found it to be “well researched”.
The filmmakers met the Talwars during the course of their research. “We did meet with Vishal and others, but after they had their script ready,” Trehan said. “Our meetings with them were more about the Talwars’ approval and legal issues. We were, of course, always there to answer all their queries and show them documents relating to the case, but since the film presents several perspectives, the main script was already in place.” The family was shown the film in June on the condition that no portion would be changed even if they disapproved, since they had already read the screenplay. Priti Shahani, president of Junglee Pictures, the Bennett and Coleman Company Limited’s film production arm that has co-produced Talvar along with Vishal Bhardwaj Pictures, did not respond to requests for an interview.
Talvar is only the newest true crime movie based on a beehive-stirring case whose principal players have not yet exhausted their right to legal recourse. Rajesh and Nupur Talwar have filed an appeal against their conviction that is yet to be heard by the Allahabad High Court.
For generations, cynical journalists have followed the maxim "If it bleeds, it leads”, an acknowledgement of the human appetite for sensational crimes. That precept seems to holds as much sway in film studios. True crime movies hold out the promise of introspection, the unvarnished truth and a definitive analysis of the motives of the key players. Such projects usually see the filmmaker absorbing the multiple functions of investigator, psychologist, judge and even in some cases God. However, some filmmakers who dig for screenplays at the graveyards of prime-time scandals frequently fail to own up to the source of their inspiration. When a true crime movie source is undisguised, the knives are quick come out, usually in the form of a restraining order.
The debate about whether books and films should tackle matters that are sub-judice is being constantly redefined. Books about ongoing cases usually go into press only after being put through intense legal scrutiny, such as Sen’s Aarushi and Meenal Baghel’s Death in Mumbai, which looks at the sensational murder of Neeraj Grover in 2008, just days before the Noida deaths.
However, the benchmark is higher for movies, which are deemed to have a wider reach and the potential to shape the minds of judges more persuasively than a brilliant legal argument. Take, for instance, Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday, an adaptation of Husain Zaidi’s investigative account of the March 1993 bomb blasts in Mumbai. Though it was ready in 2004, its release was delayed by three years after some of the accused argued that the thriller would prejudice their legal appeal, since it shows them as having committed acts they denied they had anything to do with. The Supreme Court agreed to allow Black Friday to be released only after the verdict in the blasts trial had been declared.
“We felt that the movie would prejudice the cause, since people would go on the basis of whatever was shown,” said lawyer Farhana Shah, who has represented over 80 of the accused, including the group of petitioners in this case. “Movies and television have a strong impact on people, and can create doubts in the mind of the courts – seeing is more impactful than reading.”
Among India's best-known true crime films was RK Nayyar’s 1963 movie Yeh Rastey Hai Pyaar Ke, based on the Nanavati murder case four years earlier. KM Nanavati, a Navy commander, shot dead Prem Ahuja, his British wife Sylvia’s lover, and then surrendered. He was initially declared innocent by a jury possibly seduced by the relentless campaign waged in Nanavati’s favour by the tabloid Blitz. “None did more to make a routine murder trial into a classic story of Bombay’s bourgeois life than the Blitz,” writes Princeton historian Gyan Prakash.
A mistrial was declared and Nanavati was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court. However, he was pardoned in 1961. By the time Yeh Rastey Hai Pyaar Ke was released, Nanavati and his family had decamped to Canada, never to return. But the initial verdict prompted the government to abolish the jury system.
Don’t judge the judges
Supreme Court senior advocate Sanjay Hegde noted that judges "are more impervious to social influence than is feared". He said, “Judges are trained to know that movies are fiction and they must only look at the reality before them.”
In 2013, Hegde represented Muthulakshmi, the wife of sandalwood smuggler Veerappan when she protested against a Tamil biopic on the outlaw called Vanayudham (Battle of the Forest). Muthulakshmi was awarded a Rs 25 lakh compensation package, and the producer removed a line stating that Vanayudham was based on a true story.
The larger question, Hegde pointed out, is not whether movies influence judgments, but whether they violate privacy norms. Privacy has been a significant casualty as the speed of news gathering and transmission has accelerated in recent years. In the case of scandalous crimes, it has become increasingly common to announce a movie adaptation within weeks, if not days, as is the case with the Sheena Bora murder. The case has not yet gone to trial, but the press release announcing a movie adaptation has gone out – producer Manees Singh, who has bankrolled the Tamil movie Welcome to Chennai, has indicated that he is working on hard on bringing to the screen a “story of high society love, scandal, deceit, lies, murder and financial embezzlement all rolled into one that is unfurling right before our own eyes and is one that would put any Sherlock Holmes thriller to shame”. According to the press release, Singh has hired three researchers and commissioned “two of Bollywood’s best script writers” to “immediately start work”.
Reality television actor and item song performer Rakhi Sawant has also announced that her next movie, Ek Kahani Julie Ki, has been inspired by Bora’s murder, which was allegedly planned and executed by Bora’s mother, former television channel head Indrani Mukerjea.
Headlines to screenplays
The list of headline-to-screenplay titles includes Jagmohan Mundhra’s Bawander, based on the gang-rape of social worker Bhanwari Devi in Rajasthan in 1992, and Ram Gopal Varma’s Not a Love Story, based on the Neeraj Grover case, in which navy officer Emile Jerome Mathew was convicted of killing Grover for allegedly having seduced Jerome’s fiancée, television actor Maria Susairaj.
Ram Gopal Varma, an expert practitioner of the art of directing and producing fiction based on fact, was pilloried for his sleaze-filled narrative, especially by Grover’s anguished father, who did not file a case but spoke out at length against the project to journalists.
In the case of Rahasya, the 2014 production was cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification, but was held back by a petition from the Talwars pleading that its release would prejudice their appeal. The movie was cleared after a screening was arranged for members of the Talwar family, who recorded their dissent against its content.
Director Manish Gupta’s police procedural bears superficial similarities with the Noida case (it is styled as an Agatha Christie-style mystery, down to the climax in which the lead investigator assembles the dramatis personae in one room for the big revelation). But Gupta did borrow details from the 2008 murders: the teenager is found on her bed with her throat slit, as was Aarushi; the parents are doctors; the domestic worker is missing. Unsubstantiated allegations of unfaithful parents, which were among the lurid rumours that clung to the Talwars in the early phases of the investigation, are proven to be true by Rahasya.
Among the better-known examples of films that have fictionalised a high-profile case without leaping over legal hurdles is No One Killed Jessica, based on the murder of Jessica Lall in Delhi in 1999. Rajkumar Gupta made the movie after the accused, Manu Sharma, was convicted by the Supreme Court of having shot dead model and celebrity bartender Lall when she refused to serve him a drink. Gupta faced challenges of a non-legal kind while writing his screenplay. “The case had been widely reported and everyone had his or her version,” he said. “There was reality and then there was hearsay. The challenge was to not be affected by this, but to be true to the case as well as be sensitive to the tragedy without getting overwhelmed by the material.”
Gupta’s version recreates the murder and focuses on its ramifications through characters based on Jessica Lall’s sister, Sabrina (played by Vidya Balan), and a news anchor (Rani Mukerjee), who is a composite of several influential faces on prime-time television. “I wanted to bring out Sabrina’s struggle, as well as the fact that the media came through positively in this case, for once,” Gupta said.
There would be many more such true crime explorations, biopics, and movies based on historical incidents if it were not for the fear of litigation, Gupta said. “I can’t make a film the way I want to because even before I think of making it, there will be ten PILs [public interest litigations] and harassment to the producers,” he said. “Many more subjects would have existed if it wasn’t for this problem.”
If legal hurdles are a given in true crime adaptations, why don’t filmmakers simply wait for a final verdict before rushing to the sets? One reason is that the glacial pace of the Indian judicial system ensures that a hot story loses its sizzle by the time the process of appeals has been completed.
The competitive media reporting of sensational crimes ensures that between strategically planted police leaks and the first trial hearing, the public has already formed its views on who did what, how and why. In a society ruled by a suspicion of authority figures, especially the police, and the unshakeable perception that a favourable court ruling can be purchased like a car, the true crime film offers a false sense of closure. It suggests that “The End” is actually in sight, which is not always the case in real life.
