Anatomy of a serial killer

Piyush Jha

Director and author Piyush Jha is excited that his crime novel is being made into a Bollywood film

Creative film directors like Piyush Jha are primarily great storytellers. Piyush’s films, Chalo America (1999), King of Bollywood (2004) and Sikandar (2009) explored different genres. He then turned to writing crime fiction—Mumbaistan,Compass Box Killer and Anti-Social Network. His latest work Raakshas, India’s No. 1 Serial Killer, which was launched recently, will now be made into a Hindi film.

“Serial killing is a kind of macabre art perfected by psychopaths, who are either on a pleasure trip or a trail of revenge. India has had a fair share of these killers: Raman Raghav, Auto Shanker, The Stoneman, Beerman, The Pandher and Koli duo, The Joshi-Abhyankar Killers and Shobraj,” says Piyush.

In Raakshas, Piyush Jha writes about a scheming and methodical killer, who he doesn’t name, till the very end. “These killers are usually nameless and faceless, and most often, names are foisted on them by the public and the investigative agencies,” says Piyush.

At the very end, Piyush also mentions the names of some lesser-known serial killers–Amardeep Sada, Mohan Kumar (Cyanide Mohan), Umesh Reddy, Darbara Singh (The Baby Killer), Chandrakant Jha (The Body Parts Killer), Sadashiv Sahu (The Godhuli Killer), Devendra Sharma (The Taxi Killer) and Shankariya (The Hammer Man), who have all been equally menacing, deadly and scheming.

Is the story influenced by real-life killers? “I have been influenced to a small extent by a few of them. But I’ve had to control the level of brutality when writing the story. As you will experience when reading that section (at the end of the book), true killers are far more heinous than my protagonist. The truth is always gorier than fiction,” says Piyush.

The story is about the exciting, and chilling story of Raakshas, and his gory escapades in the city of dreams-the sleepless, nightmarish Mumbai.

Piyush approaches each piece of fiction as his first story. “Then, I examine whether the story works better as a film or as a novel or a short-story. After making that decision, I go ahead and translate it into the form that I think it works best for. However, some readers find that even my books translate well into films. That is on account of my writing style, which is quite visual,” says Piyush. And that’s why he has already identified a producer to convert his book into a film that he himself will be directing.