Neeraj Pandey: Added things that were not in the book

He enjoys watching mindless comedies sometimes but making one is not his cup of tea Instead Neeraj Pandey likes to tell gripping thrillers when he goes behind the camera After Special Ops 15 The Himmat Story 2021 the director is ready with another thriller Khakee The Bihar Chapter Inspired by IPS Amit Lodharsquos book Bihar Diaries The True Story of How Biharrsquos Most Dangerous Criminal Was Caught the Netflix offering is a retelling of the conflict between the officer and Samant Pratap one of Biharrsquos most feared ganglords Ahead of the showrsquos release creator Pandey discusses finding an unexpected hero in Lodha and how he went beyond the bookEdited excerpts from the interviewWhat about this subject caught your fancyThe journey started with my meeting with Amit Lodha He is an exIITian who chose to become an IPS officer That acted like a magnet because I had never heard of anything like that Thereon my attraction to the subject kept on building because he is from Rajasthan and then was posted in Patna mdash he was like a fish out of water It made for a great storyNeeraj PandeyWhen dealing with a story inspired by reallife events what are the things that you have to be careful aboutThe spirit of the story is sacrosanct We all take creative liberties as the story has to entertain the audience So you compress time and space to make it more dynamic and in the process some bits are left out or you choose another route to tell what has happened We have taken such liberties but nothing that tinkers with the spirit of the storyBesides referring to the book how extensive was your personal researchWe definitely went beyond the book because Amit could write only so much about the particular case Bhav Dhulia director and Uma Umashankar Singh writer and I spent a lot of time with Amit trying to get a sense of whatever we missed out on We came across tons of material and used it in our narrative We skipped certain characters that didnrsquot align with our approach to this story We also added several things that were not mentioned in the book Amit felt they were not necessary for the book but we felt it was important for the visual mediumAlso ReadManoj Bajpayee to reunite with Neeraj Pandey for Secrets of the KohinoorWhen did you start working on KhakeeI started work on it in 2017 The pandemic set us back After the first lockdown our crew of 180 to 200 people shot in the hinterlands of Jharkhand It had no basic infrastructure We had equipment coming from Delhi Kolkata and Mumbai and actors flying in and out It was a long schedule moving from one village to the other but we finished it in one goThere is no fixed formula for what will work How do you manage to hit the nail on the head every timeI trust my instinct and take the plunge Sometimes you spend a lot of time on a subject and then realise that itrsquos not working It takes more courage to pull the plug at that point I have pulled the plug on a lot of projects Even if the project has not worked out the journey has taught me more As for the pressure of delivering successful shows I feel blessed and privileged to have an audience waiting in anticipation of my work I would rather be in this position than anywhere elseWhat made you repeat Karan Tacker in Khakee after Special OpsI have been proud of his work on Special Ops When it came to this showrsquos casting we unanimously thought of casting him again because he fits the bill Amit is exactly like him He is an unassuming person who doesnrsquot look like a cop at all If he walked into this room yoursquod think he is a Netflix executive That is what we were seeking with Karan