Richie Mehta’s Poacher is an eight-episode investigative thriller inspired by true events. (Photo: Viral Bhayani)
Inspired by true events, Richie Mehta decided to cast Nimisha Sajayan in the lead role, but her character in real-life is a male.
Richie Mehta, the Emmy Award-winning director of Delhi Crime is back again with an investigative thriller, which is also based on true events. Titled Poacher, the eight-episode series on Prime Video talks about one of the biggest poaching hunts done by the Forest department officials in Kerala in 2015. The project took Mehta was working on other projects alongside, but had this project with him for almost five years and has done extensive research and spoken to people who were actually fighting this battle within the forest department in Kerala.
Interestingly, Mehta has kept the series primarily in Malayalam, but it is considerably a multi-lingual series which has Hindi, Bengali and English dialogues. The star cast includes Nimisha Sajayan in a pivotal role, alongside Roshan Mathew and Dibyendu Bhattacharya in the lead. The story takes us through a poaching that happens in a forest in Kerala and how the officials track the poachers down is the major crux of the series. The basic sketch of the story can be seen in the captivating trailer that was released on Thursday (February 15), at an event in Mumbai.
Speaking at the trailer launch, which News18 attended, Mehta mentioned that the characters in the series are based on real-life people who were involved in the investigation of this case. Interestingly, News18 learnt that the character Sajayan portrays in Poacher is actually a male officer in real life. We asked Mehta on what made him choose a female for this role, and he said, “Nimisha’s character is actually an amalgamation of many. Primarily one person as an inspiration, and handful of other officers from Kerala Forest Department. When I was doing the research, and I was coming across all the people involved in this case, they were all men. And I asked somebody at one point, ‘were there any women involved?’. The answer was, ‘no, this group of people in the forest department is a boys’ club’. And I said, ‘not anymore’.”
The trailer launch also saw Alia Bhatt join the panel as an executive producer. Bhatt mentioned that she first heard the story of Poacher when she was “full-blown pregnant and about to pop”. However, she says that before she could think of even being an executive producer, she “responded as a person”. “When I first saw the show, I couldn’t stop watching it. It is a binge and how! You can’t take your eyes off from the screen. Nimisha is outstanding, Roshan, who I have had the honour of working with, has been unbelievable and also Dibyendu. Not just the three of them, but the whole cast – they hold your attention,” she shared.
