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Paanch poster.jpg
Movie Poster for Paanch
Directed by Anurag Kashyap
Produced by Tutu Sharma
Written by Anurag Kashyap
Starring Kay Kay Menon
Aditya Srivastava
Vijay Maurya
Joy Fernandes
Tejaswini Kolhapure
Music by Vishal Bhardwaj
Cinematography Natarajan Subramaniam
Edited by Aarti Bajaj
Release date(s) 2013 (expected)
Country India
Language Hindi
Budget INR2 crore (US$340,000)

Paanch (Hindi: पाँच) is an unreleased Indian film written and directed by Anurag Kashyap and starring Kay Kay Menon, Aditya Srivastava, Vijay Maurya, Joy Fernandes and Tejaswini Kolhapure. The film is "loosely" based on the 1976-77 Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders in Pune.[1]

The film never got a theatrical or home-video release. The Central Board of Film Certification objected to the film's violence, the depiction of drug abuse and bad language. After some cuts, the film was cleared in 2001. However, it could not be released as the producer faced some problems.[2]



The story is about 5 members of a rock band with a female and male vocalist who are involved in drugs, sex, smoke and the like. The lead man is crazy and addicted and goes to any extent to achieve what he wants. Soon all band members get involved in robbery and murder, with the cops at their heels. The rest of the film tells what happens to them.


The soundtrack of the film features music composed by Vishal Bhardwaj and lyrics written by Abbas Tyrewala. The album was released by BMG Crescendo in May 2002,[3] and marked the entry of the music publisher into the Hindi film music market.[4]

No. Title Length
1. "Main Khuda" (performed by K.K.) 6:06
2. "Ye Kaisa Hai Shaher" (performed by Dominique) 4:22
3. "Paka Mat" (performed by Hariharan and K.K.) 4:38
4. "Paanch Theme" (performed by Dominique) 2:49
5. "Ankhiyan Chipki" (performed by Ustad Sultan Khan) 4:20
6. "Jism Hai" (performed by Asha Bhosle) 3:31
7. "Tamas" (performed by Deva Sen Gupta) 4:31
8. "Main Khuda" (performed by Sunidhi Chauhan) 4:36


In September 1993, while Kashyap stayed at the St. Xavier's Boys Hostel, he used to hang out with Adam Avil, Eddie Avil, Luke Kenny and Ulysses Veyra the members of a band—Greek (later Pralay). He took copious notes on how they lead their lives—forty pages of a small notebook, and began writing the script—"in bits and pieces"—for a film that he called Mirage but which would later become Paanch. Kashyap had seen ex-VJ Luke Kenny in a Vikram Kapadia play, and approached him with an incomplete script, but nothing came out of it.[5] Anurag Kashyap Interview Excerpts from the interview (in Hindi) conducted by Pravesh Bhardwaj and Ajay Brahmatmaj[6] Later on, while working with Nair, he came across files related to the Joshi-Abhyankar Serial Murders that took place in Pune in 1976.[7]

"Five very ordinary college kids viciously murdered nine people. I got what I needed to finish my script then."

He had also seen a film, Fun, about two mentally unstable girls murdering an elderly woman. And Paanch was ready to be made into a film. Kashyap says—

"There was a structuring in Fun, which you will also see in Paanch. There was something in Fun. When I began looking for it, I saw a pattern in Last Train to Mahakali, in my own film Paanch and in Auto Narayan. All three films had a similar formula. I am able to analyze it because I have.[5]

Film festival premiere[edit]

Paanch was shown as the closing film in Osian's Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema in 2005.[8]


Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]