The antagonist of Dhahanam is based on a real person, says Ram Gopal Varma

Ram Gopal Varma, maker of one of Hindi cinema's best gangster dramas, is coming up with another project focused on crime. His production Dhahanam (2022), a web-series, is set to be released on MX player on 14 April in Hindi, Telugu and Tamil.

Varma, at a recent press meet in Mumbai, revealed that the show's antagonist Obul Reddy, played by Abhilash Chaudhary, is based on a real person. "This antagonist is based on a person who had a reputation of being very violent and cruel, one who liked to torture people," the producer said.

"The guy was killed in 1995. I had met his best friend a few years ago. The first time I met him, I asked him, was he really that bad a guy? And he said, 'No. at least not as much as people think'.

"I was a little surprised and asked how many people he had killed. The friend replied, 'Not many. At the most 200, that's it'."

Varma was baffled when the friend dropped the number 200 so casually. "Naturally I asked him, 'What do you mean then that he is not that bad a guy? He killed 200 people!' So he said, 'See, people think he killed 500, and frankly there were a few like him who had killed more than 500 people. So if you compare him to those goons, he was not that bad'."

Varma learnt another interesting anecdote about the killer from his friend. "Apparently he was a nice guy when not drunk, but he would be drunk all the time. He used to begin drinking at 2pm and go on till midnight. Then he would wake up at noon the next day. So those two hours between noon and 2 pm, he was a really nice guy."

Directed by Agasthya Manju, Dhahanam also stars Abhishek Duhan, Isha Koppikar, Naina Ganguly and Sayaji Shinde.