Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated on 21 May 1991 in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. The government of India formed SIT a day later, and Major Sivaram, a top investigation officer and a NSG commando with a proven track record, is put in charge to hunt down the killers. His bosses Partipan, the SIT chief, and DIG Raju give him all the necessary support, with only one request—“Catch Sivarasan alive, before he consumes the deadly cyanide.”
Sivaram’s meticulous approach drives the case forward. After the arrest of Murugan, and the interrogation of Nalini, the investigation tightens its grip and points toward the conspirator Sivarasan, who is hiding in a house in Bangalore. The film builds its tension around the final 15 minutes, as Sivaram and his team move silently under the cover of darkness, awaiting orders from higher-ups in Delhi to commence the operation.
Yet the plan is complicated by political timing. The Delhi bosses want the moment to arrive only when they can be present to claim the glory of capturing Sivarasan alive in front of the media. The expectation clashes with the chaos of real life: the operation’s surprise element is lost as the LTTE unit had already acted, consuming cyanide, and Sivarasan had shot himself mere seconds before the raid could begin. The sequence tests Sivaram’s resolve and exposes the delicate balance between procedure and pressure, between on-the-ground reality and the optics of a high-stakes capture.
Throughout, the film stays focused on the investigation’s human and procedural toll. It emphasizes the patient, methodical work that underpins a mission of this scale—the long hours, the procedural safeguards, the intelligence leads, and the constant push-pull between political agendas and policing realities. The closing acts underscore how the pursuit of justice can be shaped as much by timing and public perception as by evidence and arrests, leaving viewers to ponder what it means to seek accountability in the glare of national memory.
In the end, the narrative honors the perseverance of the investigators who stayed relentless under pressure, highlighting their disciplined approach and the moral ambiguities that can accompany a case of such enormity. The film uses its tightly wound climax to reflect on duty, sacrifice, and the heavy price of pursuing justice in a system where timing, spectacle, and truth collide. The result is a portrayal that honors the gravity of the event while presenting the investigators’ steadfast commitment to a difficult, truth-seeking mission.
