Emmy Award-winning director Richie Mehta reveals why he chose to cast a woman in lead role of Poacher EXCLUSIVE

Emmy Award-winning “Delhi Crime” director Richie Mehta returns with an investigative thriller also based on true events. The eight-episode series on Prime Video titled Poachers follows one of the largest poaching hunts conducted by forest department officials in Kerala in 2015. During this project, Mehta was working on other projects at the same time, but he had been working with this project for almost 5 years. Over the years, we have conducted extensive research and talked to people actually involved in this fight in the forest department of Kerala.

Interestingly, Mehta has kept the series primarily in Malayalam, but it is largely a multilingual series with dialogues in Hindi, Bengali and English. The star cast includes Nimisha Sajayan in a pivotal role and Roshan Mathew and Dibyendu Bhattacharya in the lead roles. The story takes us through an incident of poaching that takes place in the forests of Kerala, and how officials track the poachers is the main crux of the series. The basic outlines of the story can be seen in an intriguing trailer released at an event in Mumbai on Thursday (February 15).

Speaking at the trailer launch event attended by News18, Mehta mentioned that the characters in the show are based on real-life people involved in the investigation of the case. Interestingly, News18 has learned that the character played by Sajayan in “Poachers” is actually a real-life male police officer. We asked Mehta what made him choose a woman to play the role and he said, “The character of Nimisha is actually an amalgamation of many characters. Mainly one person as inspiration, but also a few from the Kerala forest department. Other officers. When I was doing research, I met everyone involved in this case, and they were all men. I once asked someone, “Are there any women involved?” “. The answer is: ‘No, this group of people in the Forest Department are a boys’ club.’ I say, ‘Not anymore.'”

After the trailer was released, Alia Bhatt also joined the team as an executive producer. Butt mentioned that she was “already pregnant and about to be born” when she first heard the poacher’s story. However, she said she “responded as a human being” before she considered becoming an executive producer. “When I first saw this show I couldn’t stop watching. It was a blast, how! You couldn’t take your eyes off the screen. Nimisha was brilliant and Roshan (who I had the pleasure of working with) was amazing It’s unbelievable, and Dibyendu. It’s not just the three of them, but the whole cast — they capture your attention,” she shared.