Director Prosit Roy, known for directing Pataal Lok, discusses the making of Raakh, casting choices and the story’s 1970s India.

Prosit Roy, known for directing Pataal Lok, is back with Raakh, a web series currently streaming on OTT. The crime thriller, based in the late 1970s, is inspired by the infamous Ranga-Billa case, involving the duo behind the kidnapping and murder of siblings Geeta and Sanjay in Delhi in 1978. It stars Ali Fazal, Sonali Bendre, Aamir Bashir, Rakesh Bedi and others. In a Zoom video interview with The Free Press Journal, Prosit opened up about the making of Raakh, casting choices, and how certain issues need to be portrayed sensitively and in the correct manner, something Bollywood does not follow very often.

Excerpts:

When and why did you decide on making a series on the Ranga-Billa case?

So firstly, it is inspired by that case, not based on it. We wanted to use that just as a germ, as a starting point, to tell the story of that time. There were many other things which we wanted to explore through this series, the most important one being how it changed the landscape of our country. Earlier, we used to take lifts from cars passing by, we used to talk to strangers, but this incident changed all that. Raakh isn’t about the crime; it’s about what our country was before this crime and how it changed because of it, and also the people involved.