Ninety Days - The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi's Assassins

By Anirudhya Mitra

Anirudhya Mitra's Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi's Assassins is a fast-paced account of the huge manhunt that followed the former Prime Minister's assassination in May 1991. Written with the urgency of a thriller but grounded in records and testimonies, the book follows the Special Investigation Team as it races against time—handling turf fights with R&AW, chasing false leads, pursuing fugitives across Tamil Nadu, and piecing together the lives of conspirators like Nalini, Sivarasan, and even Prabhakaran.

Mitra shows the mix of politics, luck, and persistence behind the search, and the unsettling normalcy of the people who carried out such a shocking crime. His writing "tells" more than it "shows," but it remains compelling.

Mitra's Ninety Days is a book of bones. It tells rather than shows, but it does so with efficiency: a fast-paced chronicle of police work, a galaxy of characters kept more or less coherent, the dots joined quickly before the reader's attention frays. Kukunoor's television version takes those bones and clothes them in detail—sometimes invented, sometimes dramatized, often adding texture that the original reportage left bare.

The divergence between book and show is not stylistic alone. It is rooted in vantage points. Mitra writes as a journalist, sometimes takes a political stance, it tells the character arcs of Prabhakaran and Sivarasan. But the show is completely sterilized of any politics whatsoever. It focuses just on the investigation team.

The book reminds us of the quiet tussle between the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) and the Special Investigation Team (SIT). R&AW, with its international gaze, read the assassination through the prism of cross-border conspiracies. SIT, embedded locally, knew the rhythms of Tamil Nadu, the petty pressures from AIADMK and DMK, and the villagers who would walk up, unprompted, to offer information. The show dramatizes these tensions vividly, turning bureaucratic notes into sparring scenes. The show completely ignores this facade of the case.

Mitra recounts a peculiar chase: an SIT car pursuing suspects in a Maruti, a reminder that the humble hatchback outpaced the lumbering government Ambassador. The book also notes how raids repeatedly failed—most dramatically when Sivarasan slipped through a net that spanned the 600-square-kilometer Pulicat Lake. The show keeps the chases and raids for Sivarasan to a minimum.

Mitra provides more social and familial detail on Nalini than the show bothers with—her background, her small but decisive role, her request for a lawyer curtly rebuffed with, "This is not the United States." Sivarasan shaved off his mustache the instant his photo was published. They chose Athira as a Delhi operative because her complexion might blend in better. The book gives these nuggets but the show has no time for them.

The figure of Prabhakaran appears in both, larger than life. Mitra records the strange theatre of his 1985 meeting with Rajiv Gandhi—refusing to appear without his cyanide capsule, escorted by two superintendents who were told to watch his every movement. He claimed to be an admirer of Subhash Bose and Bhagat Singh. He disdained peace talks and chose to fight instead.

Perhaps the gravest divergence is over Mridula. In the book, she is drawn as a vivid figure: an English teacher recently unemployed, who defied Sivarasan after an asthma attack, who recognized the fugitives on television while sitting in the same room as them, who kept questioning—why Rajiv Gandhi, why still carry weapons after the deed? Kukunoor reduces her, softens her, perhaps does her the greatest injustice. Mitra's text preserves her courage, her inconvenient humanity.

The investigation was not immune to politics. AIADMK pressed Karthikeyan to implicate DMK, a detail Mitra foregrounds. Subha Subramaniam's attempt to retrieve the incriminating camera with the help of a Congress leader—rebuffed—also finds space. These moments in the book remind us that the search for assassins was entangled with party rivalries. The TV show nods at this, but prefers the thriller's pace to the chronicler's caution.

Finally, Mitra records CBI director Vijay Karan's stark calculus: better to let Sivarasan slip away than force him into a suicidal corner, for a fugitive alive meant another chance at capture. It is a rationale the show omits.

The book is fun to read. I genuinely felt sad about the tragic episode in the history of moden India. The TV show beats the book by a good margin.