Director Balaji Kumar’s upcoming Telugu film, an investigative thriller featuring Vijay Antony in the lead, has been titled ‘Hatya’, its makers announced on Wednesday.

Vijay Antony plays a detective in the gripping thriller, in which actress Ritika Singh plays Sandhya, a rookie cop, who is assigned to work alongside him.

Produced by Kamal Bohra, G Dhananjayan, Pradeep B, Pankaj Bohra, and S Vikram Kumar of Infiniti Film Ventures in association with Tan Sri Doraisingam Pillai, Siddhartha Shankar & RVS Ashok Kumar of Lotus Pictures, the film is loosely inspired by the famous Dorothy King murder case that happened in 1923.

The murder, sources claim, sent shock waves across the world because of the complexities associated with the case.

Director Balaji says that he had to work on 30-odd drafts before the final draft, which has the premise adapted to the modern-day backdrop.

Sharing about the film’s gist, he says, “The story is about a beautiful model named Leila, who is found murdered in her upscale apartment. One of the five men known to her, each with a motive to see Leila dead, has managed to get in on the night of her death. Detective Vinayak (Vijay Antony), who has been suspended from active field work after a personal tragedy for years, is brought back to crack the mystery. Ritika Singh plays Sandhya, who has to work under her mentor Vinayak to get to the bottom of the case, and solve it.”

While Vijay Antony and Ritika Singh are playing the lead characters, the others in the star cast include John Vijay, Radikaa Sarathkumar, Murli Sharma, Siddhartha Shankar, Arjun Chidambaram, Kishore Kumar and Samkit Bohra among others.

‘Hatya’ has been written and is being directed by Balaji Kumar, who earlier made movies like ‘Vidiyum Munn’ in Tamil and ‘9 Lives of Maara’ in English.

Sivakumar Vijayan is the director of Photography for this film, which will have music by Girishh Gopalakrishnan.