Meet Kesari 2 Director Karan Singh Tyagi: Son Of A CBI Officer And Harvard-Educated Lawyer Behind Akshay Kumar-Madhavan Film

Kesari Chapter 2 hit the big screens on April 18 and opened to positive reviews from cine-goers and critics alike. Featuring Akshay Kumar , Ananya Panday and R Madhavan in the lead roles, the film is based on the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Karan Singh Tyagi has directed the historical courtroom drama. A law degree from Harvard Law School came in handy for the filmmaker hailing from Meerut while researching for the movie. Know all about the director whose first film has become a talking point on social media.

Tracing Karan Singh Tyagi's journey from Meerut to Mumbai to New York and back to Mumbai

Karan Singh Tyagi hails from the small city of Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. He graduated from Government Law College in Mumbai in 2009 and went on to pursue his LLM from Harvard Law School. Despite working towards a legal career, the ‘Bollywood bug' did not leave Karan. In a conversation with ANI, he admitted being passionate about filmmaking from childhood. He said, "I grew up watching films by Rajkumar Santoshi films like Damini. That passion for large-scale human drama shaped my approach to filmmaking."

Speaking to Bar and Bench, Karan recalled talking to his partner in New York, where he also cleared the Bar, that he wishes to move back to India and become a filmmaker. In 2015, he made his dream come true by taking a sabbatical from his legal career and moving to Mumbai, something he self-admittedly is ‘happy’ about. While he holds no formal degree in filmmaking, Karan credits ‘watching all movies’ as his only training to make one.

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A film on courtroom drama did not just occur to Karan Singh Tyagi out of the blue. Speaking to the publication, he admitted being ‘surrounded’ by lawyers all his life. He said, “My father was in the CBI and he was the Chief Investigating Officer in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case. So conversations always revolved around the law. Law and movies have been enduring passions in my house. My wife is a practising Partner at AZB & Partners; she’s a litigator. So again, conversations at home primarily deal with law.”

He especially mentioned legal dramas like Damini, A Few Good Men and The Verdict as his ‘all-time’ favourite films. Thus, choosing Kesari Chapter 2, a courtroom drama as his first film, was a ‘no-brainer’ for him.

Karan Singh Tyagi is no stranger to Bollywood 

While Kesari 2 is Karan's first stint as a director, he is no stranger to Bollywood. He assisted Vishal Bharadwaj in the making of his film Rangoon (2017). Recalling it as ‘first-hand experience of how movies are made’, the filmmaker dubbed Rangoon as his ‘education’. He added, “From there, I realised that there are two ways to make your own movie in Bollywood. First, is to keep assisting a filmmaker, or second, is to start writing something of your own. I chose the latter, where I started writing my script."

It was when he came across the book, gifted by a friend, titled Case That Shook the Empire, authored by Raghu Palat and Pushpa Palat, descendants of C. Sankaran Nair, that the seeds of Kesari 2 were planted in his mind. However, the execution of the project was far from perfect for Karan Singh Tyagi and his team.

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He told ANI, “We started writing in 2020 and began filming in 2022. It took nearly three years of deep research and location scouting. But we knew this story had to be told with sensitivity and authenticity." Recreating the courtrooms of 1920 and the extensive research that went into ensuring accuracy was particularly taxing for the team.

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Kesari Chapter 2 is currently running in theatres and has received a majorly positive reception. The film has amassed a total of ₹ 45.36 Cr at the box office at the time of publishing.