Malayali Tigresses on the Prowl

TNIE catches up with actors Gouri Padmakumar and Sruthy Vijayan, who play prominent roles in 'The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case' web series

- APARNA NAIR

The Rajiv Gandhi assassination case had no particular Kerala connection except for Major A K Ravindran (retd), aka Major Ravi, who handled the NSG operations, and a few CBI sleuths who had served short stints in the state. But now, however, some Malayali names have been cropping up in discussions about the case.

Well, we are talking about its screen adaptation, 'The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case' web series directed by Nagesh Kukunoor. Two of the women leads in the drama, launched last month on Sony Liv are from Kerala — Gouri Padmakumar and Sruthy Vijayan.

While Gouri plays the petite-yet-steely standby LTTE assassin Shubha, Sruthy dons the role of the seemingly naive, flower-in-braid, garland-in-hand Thanu, whom India still remembers as the LTTE suicide bomber who blew herself to pieces to assassinate former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Sruthy and Gouri, in fact, join a group of six Malayali actors in the cast of the web series, portraying prominent figures such as LTTE chief Veluppillai Prabhakaran, infamous one-eyed Sivarasan, who masterminded the assassination, to Haribabu, the photographer killed in the blast that changed the socio-political scenes of both India and Sri Lanka.