On 12 March 1993, a series of 12 bomb blasts took place in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The attacks were carried out in retaliation for the Bombay riots that occurred earlier in the year. They resulted in 257 deaths and 713 injuries. Anurag Kashyap's feature film directorial debut "Paanch" ran into censorship trouble and had been shelved when Arindam Mitra, director of operations for "Mid-Day", approached him with the book "" written by Hussain Zaidi, their chief crime correspondent. He wanted Kashyap to write a television series based on it for "Aaj Tak", to be directed by Aditya Bhattacharya. Kashyap read an unedited version of the book, which had not been released at that point, and was "fascinated" by it. He wrote the script in episodes for the mini series but later felt it was better suited as a feature film.