Latest news with #TheHunt—TheRajivGandhiAssassinationCase
The Hindu
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Malayalam actor Shafeeq Mustafa on becoming Sivarasan in ‘The Hunt - The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case'
Actor Shafeeq Mustafa is a revelation in the Nagesh Kukunoor web series The Hunt —The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case. As the mercurial Sivarasan, the mastermind behind the 1991 assassination of the former prime minister, Shafeeq impresses in his breakout role. The Kochi-based actor is visibly happy over the outcome and the feedback coming his way from industry peers. For the 35 year-old self-taught actor who hails from Shoranur, the role was way beyond his wildest dreams. It came via a friend who told him about a production house that needed a South Indian actor. A round of auditions later, which included a dummy scene-and-look test, he was in. He is still excited about having got the opportunity to work with a director like Nagesh Kukunoor. 'It is an honour for me to work with someone like Nagesh sir. It is not like I am an established actor, I am trying to build a career for myself in films, and to get to work with him…I have given it my best shot!' His experience by way of a feature film is the 2020 film Ayyappanum Koshyum, in which he had a few scenes. Sivarasan's character as shown in the web series is complex, intelligent and cunning. He has an air of quiet resolve mingled with arrogance all of which Shafeeq has been able to translate onscreen without going over the top. Since Shafeeq was barely a year old when the events depicted in the series took place, he had a clean slate on which to draw the character. 'While part of my research came from documentaries, interviews about him, news reports, and photographs, the rest of it came from talking to people who lived through those times, especially journalists. This way I could try to get into the mind of the character,' Shafeeq says. Nagesh's inputs were of great help, he adds, in shaping the character per his vision. 'I had not read 90 Days (Anirudhya Mitra's book, the series is based on) I did not know the length of my character… I did not know too much about The Hunt. I gave it a shot because it felt unlike anything I'd encountered in my career so far, even though I am just starting out.') Of the challenges of essaying Sivarasan, the Sri Lankan dialect of Tamil aside, he says it was physically demanding. 'The prosthetic eye was a literal pain in the eye. It was so painful that often my eye would start watering. It was, literally, placing a foreign object in the eye and sometimes it would pop out. That was the actual difficult part. Nagesh sir would apologise about the discomfort…Imagine someone of his stature doing that!' Though Shafeeq has not learnt acting, he was involved in theatre while in school. He came to Kochi, pursued his cinema dreams dabbling in different departments including editing and as an assistant director. 'These were all my friends, so I could be around films, a part of movies!' Although he does not have too many feature films under his belt, he has been part of a few, including the noteworthyThiruttu Mundam. The film, directed by Renjith Vijayan, was an official selection at the International Documentary and Short Film Festival of Kerala (IDSFFK 2023). He does not know what comes next, but for now he is savouring the moment and the feedback from people such as Ahammed Khabeer, director of Kerala Crime Files, who told him that his performance was 'honest and essayed with absolute integrity.' The Hunt - The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case is streaming on SonyLiv
Indian Express
14-07-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
The night Rajiv Gandhi was killed: A Journalist remembers
The recently released OTT series on the Rajiv Gandhi assassination and how the culprits were nabbed, The Hunt — The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case (Sony LIV), brought back haunting memories of that traumatic night. At the time, I was working with the Indian Express in Madras (now Chennai) in the sports department. The national election was in full swing with former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi trying to make a comeback and defeat his former colleague-turned-bête noir, V P Singh. Rajiv Gandhi had served as Prime Minister following the assassination of his mother, Indira Gandhi, before the Bofors arms scandal saw his government fall in 1989. He had then pulled the rug from under the short-lived Chandra Shekhar government, necessitating snap elections. Rajiv Gandhi was visiting Sriperumbudur, 40 km southwest of Madras, for a routine election rally. The town was familiar to me as it was the venue for the annual races conducted by the Madras Motor Sports Club, which I had reported on. I was living in the suburb of Adyar with my parents and was alerted by them to a phone call from the sports department at 10.45 pm. It was a Tuesday, May 21, and it was my off day. Such calls at night from the department were not an unusual occurrence, and I took it, thinking it was a routine one. But the voice on the other side was grim. It was my colleague asking me if I had been listening to the BBC World Service. It was well known in the office that I was a regular listener on my transistor to their sports and news bulletins. I asked him why, and he replied: 'We have heard Rajiv Gandhi has been assassinated. Please listen to the 11 pm bulletin and confirm.' My first reaction was to laugh and say, 'You must be joking!' But he replied, 'Would I joke about something like this?' I tuned in to the bulletin and heard the BBC correspondent (who was obviously not at the spot) state, 'The bombs were apparently placed in flower pots at the venue and riots have broken out across Madras.' Neither turned out to be true, though there were sporadic bouts of violence in the city. Of course, at that time of night, rumours were flying thick and fast. Ironically, when his mother was assassinated in October 1984 in the capital, Rajiv was out of New Delhi and told reporters he had confirmed the news via the BBC. The news was conveyed to the office, and the dak (early morning) edition was held back till our reporter and photographer returned from Sriperumbudur. They did so in a state of panic following the horrific scenes which they had just witnessed. Both hitched a ride in cars of local Congress leaders with chaos, panic and trauma all round at the mass killings. Remember, there were no mobile phones back then. My mother broke down and wept on hearing the news. A childhood friend of Mrs Gandhi's, I gently asked her why she did not react the same way when Mrs Gandhi had been murdered seven years earlier. Mother's words haunt me to this day: 'Because he (Rajiv) is so young.' It was a typically stifling hot and humid May night in Madras. In a daze, I stumbled out of the house, telling my parents I would be back soon. The streets were deserted, the only sound being that of stray dogs barking. A neighbour of mine sitting in his garden had heard the news and asked me, 'Is it the LTTE?' No one knew the answer at the time, though that was the immediate thought of everyone that horrific night. It must have been a good two hours before I returned home that horrible night. To this day, I have no idea where I had wandered off and how much time had elapsed. But my parents were panicking, concerned I had been caught up in riots. Our photographer's pictures were splashed across the front and inside pages, gory though they were. The only other English daily in Madras at the time had sent a reporter, but not a photographer and had to buy them late at night from a local photographer. A couple of days later, I requested my reporter and photographer colleagues to sign the front page as my brother and I had a hobby of preserving newspapers with historic headlines, some with autographs. The reporter agreed reluctantly. But the photographer did not. I well understood. After all, he had not been far from the stage when the suicide bomber set off her bomb and the trauma was obviously still raw. The writer is a senior journalist and author based in New Delhi. He was with Indian Express from 1982 to 1991
