Ayeesha Menon

All eleven episodes of the detective serial set & recorded in Mumbai

Inspector Alia Khan is a tough, determined female cop struggling to make her mark in a male-dominated world. As she fights to uncover crime and corruption, she must also battle the endemic sexism of the police force, and the patronising, chauvinist attitudes of her boss and colleagues - as well as dealing with her own personal demons.

In Series 1, landed with a new partner, she investigates a rescued baby, a missing husband, a child prostitution ring and strange goings-on at a psychiatric hospital. When a glamour model is found dead in a five-star hotel, she sets out on the trail of Bollywood's leading heart-throb, and uncovers murder, political scandal - and the truth about her policeman father's death.

In Series 2, the disgraced police inspector has just been released from jail. Seeking a life of obscurity, she gets a job as a receptionist in a run-down Mumbai hotel. But when a serial killer starts operating on the rooftop, Alia is called in. Paired up with incompetent Inspector Ratna Shinde, she soon realises that the murderer is trying to communicate with her through the victims themselves...

Series 3 finds Alia going undercover after suspicions are raised about a young woman's death. When Nyla Ansari is found in a bathtub in her parents' home, a bottle of pills beside her, it looks like suicide. Then a video is discovered, made by Nyla a year before. In it, she claims her father, a wealthy Indian businessman, was going to kill her. Posing as a newly married couple, Alia and her male colleague Junaid Qureshi move into the flat next door. Their mission: befriend Nyla's family, friends and servants, and find out the truth...

Written by Ayeesha Menon, these fast-paced crime thrillers, recorded on location in India, star Prerna Chawal as Alia, with Anand Tiwari, Rajit Kapur, Shivani Tanksale, Tavish Bhattacharya, Rohit Malkani and Radhika Mital.

Production credits
Written by Ayeesha Menon
Script Editors: Mike Walker and Phillip Shelley
Produced by Nadir Khan
Directed, recorded and edited by John Dryden
Assistant Producer/Production Manager: Toral Shah
Production Assistant: Vivek Madan
Editing Assistants: Andrew Lewis, Aditya Khanna and Varrunn Bangera
Music: Sacha Putnam
Sound Recordists: Hitesh Chaurasia and Ayush Ahuja
Sound Design: Steve Bond
A Goldhawk Production for BBC Radio 4

Cast
Alia - Prerna Chawla
Nakul - Anand Tiwari
Inspector Desai/Parvez - Rajit Kapur
Mrs Gomes - Radhika Mittal
Popo - Rohit Malkani
Alia's father - Zafar Karachiwala
Vikram Naresh - Darius Shroff
Commissioner Kripalani - Jayant Kripalani
Ratna - Shivani Tanksale
Jamal - Kenny Desai
Yamraj - Abhay Mahajan
Meenakshi - Ratnabali Bhattacharjee
Faisal - Prashant Prakash
Bala - Prabal Panjabi
Hotel Manager - Joy Sengupta
Principal Pandey - Sohrab Ardeshir
Inspector Siddiqui - Adhir Bhat
Home Minister - Satchit Puranik
Dhruv - Neil Bhoopalam
Shaina Patel - Preetika Chawla
Junaid - Tavish Bhattacharya
Shahnaz - Shernaz Patel
Jaz - Sukant Goel
Roopkala - Lovleen Mishra
Bhupinder - Aseem Hattangady
Patel - Jaimini Pathak
Roopkala's son - Ajitesh Gupta
Dr. Rao - Sohrab Ardeshir
Dr. Rameshwari - Anahita Uberoi
Sam/Inspector Kaur/Ensemble - Vivek Madan
Pander/Bartender/Ensemble - Nadir Khan
Nyla/Adele/Ensemble - Abir Abrar
Poona/Ensemble - Kamakshi Rai
Boy - Dhruv Hemdev
With Karan Pandit, Faezeh Jalali, Devika Shahani-Punjabi, Ayeesha Menon, Ankur Vikal

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, 9-14 September 2013 (Series 1), 18-19 August 2015 (Series 2), 11-13 September 2019