Judgement is based on a real murder in a colleague’s house, says ex-IAS officer Neela Satyanarayana

Retired IAS officer and author Neela Satyanarayana’s Marathi novel Rounn (ऋण) has been adapted into the Marathi film Judgement by director Sameer Ramesh Surve. The film stars Mangesh Desai and Tejashree Pradhan and is about a murder committed by an IAS officer.

Elaborating, Neela said, “A four- or five-year-old girl sees her father kill her mother in the bathroom in a gruesome manner. The father is cunning. He says his wife died because the geyser burst. The girl is the eyewitness. But her grandfather makes her lie in court as he feels that if the father goes behind bars, the girl and her sister will have nowhere to go.”

Neela, a former election commissioner of Maharashtra, was speaking at the trailer launch of the film in Mumbai yesterday. She revealed that her book is based on a true incident.

“This is a real story that took place in the house of a colleague," the retired officer said. "The girl motivated me to write about it. If she comes in my life [and asks me to write], how can I refuse? That’s why I wrote it and people liked it.

"The meaning of Rounn is debt. Hence, the girl repays the debt of her mother by becoming a lawyer, studying the old case and reopening it,” she said.

Neela added that the story is not just about a courtroom drama but has more layers to it. “The message here is also about women’s empowerment. It shows what a girl can do and how she gets justice for her mother through her determination,” she said. 

Interestingly, Surve’s debut film Shree Partner (2012) was also a book adaptation. It was based on the late author VP Kale’s well-known novel Partner.