Sikandar Kher had enough reasons to say yes to Prahaar — Avinash Arun at the helm, Rajkummar Rao as a co-star, and above all, the opportunity to play Abbas Kazmi, the lawyer who defended 26/11 Mumbai attacks terrorist Ajmal Kasab. For Kher, it was his character’s complexity that excited him from the get-go. “It’s such a complex situation to be in as a human being. There must have been an internal conflict,” he reasoned, talking to mid-day.

So, the first thing Kher wanted to do as part of his prep for the courtroom drama was meet Kazmi. A request that Arun happily complied with. The actor recalled, “I really wanted to meet the guy who took up Kasab’s defence. We all were there — Avinash, Sumit [Roy, screenwriter] and Abbas Kazmi. As we chatted, I got a lot of insight into him. I tried to understand the man. The questions I asked him helped me gauge who he is, in a limited way; I learnt about the way he thinks and why he might have taken up the case.”