The Hunt The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case review: Nagesh Kukunoor delivers a gripping and rigorous drama

The Hunt The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case review: Nagesh Kukunoor dramatises the shocking true story without injecting any unnecessary sentimentality.

The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case review

Cast: Amit Sial, Bagavathi Perumal, Sahil Vaid, Anjana Balaji, Shafeeq Mustafa

Creator: Nagesh Kukunoor

Star rating: ★★★★.5

There's a lot to cover in the seven-episode series The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case by Nagesh Kukunoor. Adapted from Anirudhya Mitra’s non-fiction book Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassins, this is a coolly objective and engaging investigative drama that demands every second of the viewer's attention. The stakes are high because this is a real-life event, with real characters and places, and in 2025, taking offence is not that hard to begin with.

The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case review: The series is available to watch on SonyLiv.

The premise

Without much ado, the show opens with the Rajiv Gandhi’s horrific death on May 21, 1991, by a suicide bomber at a Congress Rally in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. We will return to this gruesome incident later, and come to know how the woman who took the step while garlanding Rajiv Gandhi at that spot belonged to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Sri Lankan separatist rebel organisation.

Kukunoor detaches the drama to focus on the investigation that began in the wake of this crisis. CBI officer Kaarthikeyan (Amit Sial, very effective) leads the charge and forms a group that consists of SP Amit Varma (Sahil Vaid, in a standout performance), DSP Ragothaman (Bagavathi Perumal), DIG Amod Kant (Danish Iqbal), DIG Radhavinod Raju (Girish Sharma) and later, NSG commando Ravindran (a scene-stealing turn from Vidyut Garg).

Alongside their investigation, the drama also follows the parallel track led by the perpetrators, with Sivarasan (Shafeeq Mustafa) being the mastermind behind the plan and the eventual events that will unfold in the next 90 days. From here on, Kukunoor allows no room for easy drama as the case tightens with astute observations and investigation. The intrigue is masterfully orchestrated.

Working with cinematographer Sangram Giri, Kukunoor follows each breakthrough without an ounce of distractions. There are no exaggerated close-ups or showy one-track shots to establish the brisk and no-nonsense attitude of this story. The interactions are functionary, even as the characterisations allow enough room to stand out. Each actor of the ensemble cast brings in a lot of depth to fill in where the script chooses to move ahead.

What works

The show's real standouts are its period-appropriate production design and excellent editing. Somanwita Bhattacharya, Rahul Kurup, and Protiqe Mojoomdar's attention to detail in the India of the landline calls and furniture adds so much contextual depth to the show. Meanwhile, Farooq Hundekar's sensitive and dextrous editing work ensures that the suspense never builds at the cost of restraint. The show expands and comes alive when it digs deep into the web of investigation, laying bare the intricacies of human co-dependency and fallacy.

There's a lot of restraint at play here, a remarkable quality in a show where it's so easy to bend towards either valourisation or antagonism. Kukunoor really does find the rare balance of objectivity here, refusing to give in to any pursuit of subjective truth. This is a genre that demands a distance, a lack of judgment that can only arrive when the viewer is allowed to make that decision themselves. The Hunt suggests that truth can be complicated and can exist in multiplicities, and there's no single reason that can cover its exposition. This is a consistently gripping show; Nagesh Kukunoor might just have delivered one of the year's very best shows so far.