SPEAK OF THE DEVIL

A new spate of documentaries and films are making the serial killer a full-fledged protagonist

- Bhavya Dore

In 2013, Raja Kolander, a man from UP, was convicted for killing a journalist. The police also claimed this was not his only offence—he had allegedly murdered at least a dozen more people, and resorted to sorcery and cannibalism. Kolander’s story is now the subject of Indian Predator: The Diary of a Serial Killer, an India Today Originals venture, releasing September 7 on Netflix. “We were pretty excited [by the story]. This was not something we had seen or heard before,” says Dheeraj Jindal, who directed the three-part docu-series. “We started researching this story and I realised only 20 per cent of this is in the public domain. There is a lot more we can explore through our show.”

Jindal’s series comes amidst a wave of cinematic crime—both fictional and non-fictional. September 2, for instance, will see the release of Disney+ Hotstar’s Cuttputtli, where Akshay Kumar plays a cop tracking a string of murders in Kasauli. In July, Netflix released Indian Predator: The Butcher of Delhi, a three-part series that explored a set of heinous killings in Delhi. Last year, Abhishek Bachchan starred in