The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case takes a while to find its tone. The show’s prosaic title is the first indication of a balancing act between well-publicised facts and dramatisation, subtext and context, the thin line between justice and retribution.
The Sony LIV series follows the Central government’s investigation into Rajiv Gandhi’s horrific death on May 21, 1991, in a suicide bombing carried out by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam member. Gandhi was campaigning in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu for the Lok Sabha election. His Congress party had been voted out of power, and he was aiming to return as the head of state.
Gandhi’s gruesome demise was blamed on a misguided policy decision during his prime ministership: sending the Indian Peacekeeping Force military unit to aid Sri Lanka in its civil war with the LTTE. The Tamil Tigers, led by Velupillai Prabhakaran, sought to avenge alleged abuses by the IPKF, identifying Gandhi as a high-value target of their rage.
The Hunt, adapted from Anirudhya Mitra’s non-fiction book Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassins, begins on Gandhi’s last day. Gandhi (Rajiv Kumar) arrives in Sriperumbudur late into the night. A group of Tamil Tigers, led by the one-eyed Sivarasan (Shafeeq Mustafa), is patiently waiting for him.
In the first of several miracles for the inquiry led by Kaarthikeyan (Amit Sial), a still camera containing photographs of the perpetrators survives the blast even though the photographer Haribabu doesn’t. Haribabu (Vishnu G Warrier) is one of many local LTTE sympathisers, instructed to capture the impact of the suicide attack for propaganda purposes.
The contours of Sivarasan’s plot soon comes into view. Kaarthikeyan and his core teammates – Amit (Sahil Vaid), Ragothaman (Bagavathi Perumal), Amod Kant (Danish Iqbal), Radhavinod (Girish Sharma) and Ravindran (Vidyut Garg) – assiduously track down and interrogate the plotters.
Sivarasan and his hardened aides manage to evade capture. Mounting pressure leads to the deployment of custodial beatings and even the threat of rape.
The early episodes of The Hunt have a rough time setting up the conspiracy without boring viewers. The dialogue switches between Tamil and Hindi, with Kaarthikeyan – a Tamilian in real life – bizarrely shown as a Hindi speaker.
(Some aspects of Sivarasan’s dastardly scheme and the manhunt have already inspired plot points in The Family Man’s second season, in which an ex-LTTE operative tries to carry out one last mission.)
After its initial clumsiness, The Hunt gets down to business. The screenplay by Nagesh Kukunoor, Rohit Banawlikar and Sriram Rajan gradually attains the rigour of an engaging police procedural. Pedestrian lines such as “The Gandhi family is very unlucky” and “Rajiv Gandhi must go!” (attributed to Prabhakaran, played by Jyothish MG) make way for the dogged pursuit of a formidable adversary.
There are just about enough details of the larger political backdrop to satisfy the mildly curious viewer. The events explored over seven episodes remain sensitive, with unverified theories about the assassination still floating around.
The show’s creators sidestep the minefields presented by pro-LTTE sentiment within Tamil Nadu, or the role, if any, played by politicians in delaying the capture of the fugitives. This welcome lack of sensationalism does dilute the absurdity of the circumstances surrounding Sivarasan’s end game.
The absence of finger-pointing does not preclude attempts to understand the ideology of the Tigers. A character observes that “One man’s hero is another man’s terrorist” – a reworking of an oft-quoted line from Gerald Seymour’s novel Harry's Game.
Although Sivarasan is portrayed as a comic book villain, his commitment to his cause, which is matched by the other Tigers, is unmistakeable. Parallels are drawn between the camaraderie within Kaarthikeyan’s group and the solidarity between Sivarasan and his comrades.
Amit Sial embodies the show’s carefully calibrated approach. Sial’s Kaarthikeyan is methodical, cool-headed, resigned even, whether firefighting with his bosses or facing the prospect that Sivarasan may never be caught. There are solid turns from Bagavathi Perumal, Sahil Vaid and Vidyut Garg as government officials bound by rules but not always contained by them.
The overall feeling is of a job well done, despite the hiccups and the meddling. The motives behind the political double-dealing and Indian links to the storied separatist movement are left to other, more ambitious creators.
