KM Nanavati V State of Maharashtra - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke, a 1963 suspense thriller, directed by R.K. Nayyar with Sunil Dutt, Leela Naidu, and Rehman, was the first Bollywood film which seemed to exploit the case, but flopped at the box office. The film began with a disclaimer that all people and incidents were fictitious, and altered the case's outcome. Leela Naidu's 2010 book with Jerry Pinto indicates that the movie screenplay was written before the Nanavati case. It was a coincidence of the real-life case events with a similar movie storyline that led to similarities while the movie was made.

Achanak, a 1973 crime drama, written and directed by Gulzar, starring Vinod Khanna, Lily Chakravarty, and Om Shivpuri, was inspired by the case and was a box-office hit. In the film, Vinod Khanna, who plays an upright army officer, receives a death sentence but its execution remains inconclusive.

Besides a Hindi book titled Nanavati ka Mukadama (Nanavati's trial), Anglo-Indian novelist Indra Sinha's The Death of Mr Love is a fictional account based on the murder. The book, spanning four decades between the 1950s to 1990s, tells the story of Mrs.S, the second woman besides Sylvia, with whom Prem had a physical relationship. In the title, Love is the literal translation of Prem, Ahuja's first name.

A fictionalized account of the case also appears in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, where the case of Commander Sabarmati (in the chapter titled "Commander Sabarmati's Baton") is a fictionalized account of the Nanavati case.

KBC's (Kaun Banega Crorepati) host, Amitabh Bachchan, asked on 13th October 2012 a lawyer contestant as to what was abolished following the case, KM Nanavati v State of Maharashtra.