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Tinu Suresh Desai: Gill saab shared every moment of those three days
Updated On: 02 October, 2023 07:11 AM IST | Mumbai | Upala KBR
Mission Raniganj director Desai recounts his stay at late mining engineer Jaswant Gill’s Amritsar home to hear account of rescuing 65 trapped in flooded mine
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Kumar plays Jaswant Singh Gill, who had headed the rescue operation
For director Tinu Suresh Desai, Mission Raniganj: The Great Bharat Rescue is the culmination of his hard work of seven years. In 2016, when writer Deepak Kingrani first brought the 1989 Raniganj Coalfields collapse to his attention, the director knew he wanted to take the real-life episode to the big screen. The Akshay Kumar and Parineeti Chopra-starrer chronicles the heroism of late mining engineer Jaswant Singh Gill, who rescued 65 miners trapped in West Bengal’s Raniganj coal mine that was flooded in November 1989. “Such a story of heroism needed to be told [to the audience]. Few knew that such a big rescue operation was undertaken by Coal India, Gill saab and his team,” begins Desai.
His research for the survival thriller began with meeting the man at the centre of it—Daddy-ji, as Desai would refer to Gill. “In 2017, I stayed at Daddy-ji’s home in Amritsar. He shared his experience of every moment of those three days that he headed the mission. He remembered how he stood there, day and night, to make sure everyone was rescued.” As part of the research, the director went to Mahabir Colliery where the incident had taken place. “I interviewed a few miners, the workers who had constructed the capsule, crane operators, and so on. I had about 100 to 150 hours’ footage.”
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