"MURDER, HE WROTE"

Ashutosh Rana and Vijay Raaz shine in JioCinema's Murder in Mahim, a web series based on Jerry Pinto's layered crime novel

- Devarsi Ghosh

Murder in Mahim emerged from Jerry Pinto's rage in 2017. While the Delhi High Court decriminalised homosexual acts between consenting adults in 2009, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling in 2013, causing widespread disappointment and rage among India's LGBTQ community and their allies.

"I was moved by anger, the anger that an old-fashioned and ridiculous law could criminalise ten per cent of India who happen to love people of the same sex," recalls Pinto.

The murder mystery novel, which followed journalist Peter Fernandes and cop Shiva Jende investigating serial murders of gay men who have sexual encounters in suburban rail- way station toilets, is now a Hindi web series streaming on JioCinema. Ashutosh Rana plays Peter, Vijay Raaz Shiva.

The suspense is kicked off with the corpse of a brutally murdered man found in a public toilet alongside Matunga Road railway station bridge in Mumbai. While the hardboiled Shiva investigates in a routine fashion, retired journalist Peter has some soul-searching to do as he grapples with his adult son's homosexuality in the course of following the blood and mayhem.