In the second season of Freedom at Midnight that is filled with earnest performances, Abhishek Banerjee’s cameo comes as a surprise. The actor plays a rioter, fuelled by revenge after having lost his pregnant wife to communal conflict, who eventually surrenders himself to Gandhi in showrunner and director Nikkhil Advani’s series. Anyone watching the sequence will be reminded of Om Puri’s character in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982), in which the late actor played a rioter, Nahari, who tells Gandhi to end his hunger strike. Interestingly, talking to mid-day, Banerjee revealed that stepping into the role was his way of paying homage to Puri.

Abhishek Banerjee in the second season of ‘Freedom at Midnight’