It was when he was researching his first title, When the Devil Whispers, about the first Indian woman sentenced to death, that Ajinkya Bhasme, 29, got the idea for his second book. For As Death Stared Back, he met patients suffering from mental degenerative disorders like alzheimer's, dementia and schizophrenia. The son of a criminal lawyer mother and agriculture officer father has a degree in chemical engineering and worked at Dr Reddy's Lab before turning full-time writer. Bhasme says the familial tradition of academics makes him a passionate researcher. He decided to deep dive into mental conditions that are seldom discussed in India.

"I began my research by visiting asylums, meeting psychiatrists and patients who had been rehabilitated. I met a patient with catatonia, a condition characterised by abnormality of movement and behaviour arising typically from schizophrenia. They freeze, they can't move. I thought he was possessed but the psychiatrist explained why he was behaving the way he was." It's here that Bhasme first learnt of capgras delusion. The rare psychiatric disorder also called impostor syndrome, sees a person harbour a delusion about a friend, spouse, parent, close family member, even a pet, being replaced by an identical impostor. Patients could get violent towards misidentified persons. Usually one person who is very familiar to the patient is persistently misidentified. In most married patients, the spouse is the double. Sometimes, it is also the medical care staff. Experts say, capras is usually a symptom of a recognised psychosis.