Tinu Suresh Desai: Gill saab shared every moment of those three days

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."

Jaswant Singh Gill and Tinu Desai

The director says he walked the fine line between facts and dramatisation during the shoot. "We had to recreate a coal mine of 1989, and shoot the water sequence inside that mine set. It was challenging, and required a lot of planning." What made the project all the more demanding was recreating the mild steel capsule that was used to rescue miners. "I was fortunate that Coal India had preserved the original capsule in their Ranchi museum. I called my production designers to Ranchi; they studied the capsule and created a replica in 20 days."

Desai, whose directorial offering Rustom (2016) earned Kumar a National Award, was keen to reunite with him on the thriller. He narrated the story to the actor on his birthday. "Akshay loved the concept, and wanted to meet Gill saab. They spoke for 25 minutes on FaceTime. They spoke [with such warmth] as if they had
always known each other."