In the 1960s, the city of Mumbai, then called Bombay, witnessed the menace of the serial killer Raman Raghav. Not many youngsters from today would be aware that the next decade saw the terror of a team of serial killers in Pune as well, when as many as ten people were murdered.
Now, Jio Studios has announced a Marathi web-series Jakkal on the same crime, known by the name of Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders. The series is named after Rajendra Jakkal, the mastermind behind the crimes and the leader of the gang.
Produced by Shivam Yadav and Kartikee Yadav’s A Culture Canvas Entertainment Production, Jakkal is created by Vivek Wagh. In fact, Wagh had made a documentary on the same case with the same title and had received the National Award for Best Investigative Film during the 67th edition of the awards in 2021.
This isn't the first Marathi project based on these murders. Filmmaker Rajdutt's Maaficha Sakshidar (1986) depicted the same crime, in which Nana Patekar played Jakkal. The film also starred Mohan Gokhale.
According to the official note by the makers, Jakkal will try to understand how youngsters from middle-class background knowingly or unknowingly enter the world of crime and to what extent they can go on this path. All the murderers in the case were commercial arts student from Pune's Abhinav Kala Mahavidyalaya.
Sharing more info on the show, Wagh said in a statement, “Around 1976 and 1977, a cultured city like Pune had two Emergencies imposed – one by Delhi and the other by Jakkal. We will show what lies on the other side of these cruel and gruesome murders. Is Jakkal just a surname or a state of consciousness? And what about those 10 innocent victims? We will try answering whether an artiste was a murderer or whether the murderer was unfortunately an artiste.”
Jakkal is due to be released on a digital platform on October 2023.