New Delhi, July 19, 2025 — More than three decades after the tragic assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, filmmakers and showrunners continue to revisit the event that shook India’s political landscape. The latest addition to this growing body of work is The Hunt – The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case, a chilling and methodical series released on SonyLIV that delves into the operational complexity of the investigation and the unprecedented manhunt that followed.
Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on May 21, 1991, in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, by Thenmozhi Rajaratnam, alias Dhanu, a female suicide bomber affiliated with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The attack, carried out using an RDX-laden belt, killed 16 people, including Gandhi and the perpetrator, and injured 43 others. The assassination was captured on film by a local photographer, whose camera survived the blast and became crucial evidence in the investigation.
The new series joins a lineage of cinematic interpretations that have explored the assassination from various angles:
- Santosh Sivan’s The Terrorist (1998): A poetic portrayal of a guilt-ridden assassin, widely praised for its humanism and visual storytelling.
- AMR Ramesh’s Cyanide (2006): A Kannada-language thriller reconstructing the final days of the conspirators in Bengaluru.
- Major Ravi’s Mission 90 Days (2007): A Malayalam film dramatizing the race to capture the culprits, based on the director’s own experience in the Special Investigation Team.
- Shoojit Sircar’s Madras Cafe (2013): A restrained political thriller that explores the geopolitical backdrop without directly naming Gandhi.
- Amazon’s The Family Man Season 2 (2021): A fictionalized narrative with clear thematic echoes of the assassination plot.
The enduring fascination with the case stems from its multifaceted nature—part political thriller, part human tragedy, and part true-crime procedural. The assassination involved a charismatic leader poised for a political comeback, a female suicide bomber, intelligence lapses, and a legacy abruptly cut short. It also raised persistent questions: Were there complicit political players? Is the full truth buried under bureaucratic red tape? And how did this single act reshape India’s political trajectory?
As The Hunt brings renewed attention to the case, it underscores how the assassination continues to resonate in both public memory and popular culture—an emotionally charged story that straddles the line between reel and real.
