The truth about real-life incidents, like an unsolved homicide, while devastating to a family, can provide fertile ground for filmmakers to exercise their creativity and take a few poetic liberties. They are given a ready-made plot, allowing them to add or remove characters as necessary, change a few events, and speculate on the missing pieces.

A few days ago, we looked at Talvar, a movie by Vivek Bharadwaj starring Irrfan Khan, which was based on a real-life double murder in a suburb of New Delhi, India. In this post, we will explore Rahasya, another movie based on the same incident, which was released months before Talvar.

Rahasya, written and directed by Manish Gupta and starring Kay Kay Menon, is another absorbing Bollywood thriller. It introduces more commercial elements and plot twists compared to Talvar.

Remy (Ashwini Kalsekar), the live-in housekeeper at the Mahajan residence, discovers 18-year-old Ayesha’s murdered body in her room just as she is bringing her tea. Soon, the apartment becomes a crime scene, with the police investigating the premises.

The house servant, Chetan, is conspicuously missing and becomes the prime suspect. The officer in charge interviews Ayesha’s parents. Her father, Dr. Sachin Mahajan, cannot recall the events of the previous night as he was recovering from a drunken stupor. Ayesha’s mother was not at the apartment that night, as she was out of town.

The case is handed over to the CBI, and Officer Sunil Parashar is put in charge of the investigation. Brinda (Mita Vashisht), a former actress, and her husband, Dr. Hansal, live nearby and are friends of the Mahajans. The investigation soon reveals that Brinda and Dr. Sachin are having a secret affair, and Dr. Hansal is aware of it. This couple, along with the Mahajans, Remy, and Chetan, are all suspects. The investigation also uncovers that Riyaz, a young man from the neighborhood, was in a relationship with Ayesha, making him another suspect.

Chetan’s body is later found buried in the Mahajan apartment, and Sudhakar, a friend of Chetan’s, is also mysteriously murdered. Now, it’s up to Sunil Parashar to solve the case.

His investigation takes him on a wild journey as he interrogates numerous people connected to the case, fights off bad guys, and uses his deductive skills to crack it. In the process, he uncovers buried family secrets, more infidelity, and several other revelations before exposing the killer or killers. Rahasya offers a denser plot and more complex family dynamics than Talvar. Interestingly, the murderer in Rahasya differs from Talvar‘s theory, making both films worth watching.

Kay Kay Menon portrays the wisecracking and flamboyant CBI officer Sunil Parashar, a sharp contrast to Irrfan Khan’s more subdued but tough Ashwin Kumar in Talvar. Menon’s character resembles the shrewd detectives of classic whodunit films more than a real-life investigator. He even has a few fistfights, like a typical Hindi movie hero. This adds flair to the plot without detracting from his performance.

While Talvar presents the story from three different perspectives using the Rashomon technique, Rahasya unfolds with a more linear narrative, following Parashar’s investigation. For more on the Rashomon technique, please check out my review of Rashomon, the classic Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa.

This movie is one of the best Bollywood films I’ve seen in recent memory. Feel free to watch both Talvar and Rahasya, as neither spoils the other.