Rachna Singh, Editor, The Wise Owl talks to Shailendra Jha about his book ‘Press 9 for a Crime.’ Shailendra Jha is the creator and co-writer of the highly acclaimed Disney+ Hotstar series Grahan. He is a recipient of the prestigious Screenwriters Association Award. His writing has also earned him multiple nominations for various awards, including the Filmfare OTT Awards. His short film Tumhare Bina has been screened at several international film festivals, including the Bengaluru International Short Film Festival and the South Asian Short Film Festival.

In the news industry, Jha launched and led India’s first speed news channel, Tez and led the output team of Aaj Tak. He continues to create stories across mediums as a screenwriter, author, director, show-runner and creative consultant.

 

Thank you Shailendra for talking with The Wise Owl.

 

RS: Let me start with a question that has been nagging me since I picked up your book Press 9 for a Crime. You have been a filmmaker par excellence and you have founded/headed prestigious news channels. What made you switch from cinema and journalism to fiction writing?

 

SJ: It’s absolutely my pleasure to be talking with you Rachna.

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At the core, it was the urge to tell as many stories as I can. That urge was pushed further by the frustration of how long it can take for a story to make it to the screen. You can spend years developing something, and even when you’re close, the process depends on so many moving parts.

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With Press 9 for a Crime, there was also a different kind of pressure: urgency. The more I researched cyber scams, digital arrest, and human trafficking disguised as foreign job opportunities, the more I felt this was a story that needed to reach people quickly. That’s what made me choose to write it as a novel. Urgency and the immediacy - I could put it out into the world without waiting for the long cycle of production and then it was just me and the readers.

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Importantly, I don’t see it as a switch. I am still creating stories for the screen. Writing a novel is an extension of my storytelling desire. And I am able to do all this on the foundation of my journalism days. Journalism gave me the training of asking, “What’s really going on here?” In a newsroom, you learn to take chaos and organise it into a clean narrative arc - what’s the hook, what’s the turning point, what’s the bigger context, what do you hold back, what do you reveal. That instinct is what I use in fiction - whether I’m writing for screen or writing novels.

 

 

RS: Your book, Press 9 for a Crime opens in a low-income Delhi neighbourhood and quickly expands into the dark world of cybercrime in Cambodia. What drew you to this specific intersection of the domestic and the global—family life on one side, a transnational crime machine on the other?

 

SJ: Because that’s the truth of the connected world we’re living in today. The digital landscape has become both an intricate web of opportunity and a labyrinth of threats. The global no longer sits somewhere far away; it is right next to us - in our smartphones and laptops.

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I was drawn to that intersection of the domestic and the global for two reasons. First, these crimes begin in deeply domestic, personal spaces: a family trying to survive, a young man chasing what seems like a lucrative job, a phone call that sounds official, a promise that feels like opportunity. Second, a family living in a low-income locality, one that may never have stepped outside Delhi, is suddenly pitted against a transnational machinery that stretches across borders, laws, and languages.

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The family side matters to me because of the emotional anchor it provides to the characters. The global side matters because it reveals scale - how organised, industrial, and ruthless these networks have become, and how heavily the odds are stacked against the people I want my readers to care about.

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What motivated me to write this story was precisely the collision: a very ordinary Indian family on one side, and on the other, a crime economy with money, power, and connections. And in between lies a moral complexity I wanted to explore: that within this machine, even the “scammer” can be someone who is a victim first.

 

 

RS: Your novel is being praised for how “frighteningly real” it feels. How much of Press 9 for a Crime is inspired by real cyber-scam ecosystems, and what kind of research did you undertake to get the details right?

 

SJ: A lot of it is inspired by the real cyber-scam ecosystem, not by any one single case. The starting point was a news report that genuinely shook me, about a woman kept under camera surveillance for over 72 hours and even forced to undress under the guise of a “strip search.” That was my first real encounter with the term “digital arrest.” From there, once I began pulling the thread, I found countless similar incidents, and then another connected horror, people lured by “foreign jobs” and trafficked into scam compounds, then coerced into scamming others.

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I have rooted the characters in familiar places. I’ve lived in Patparganj, very close to Mandawali and Mayur Vihar, so the domestic world comes from observation and memory. I saw pictures and watched videos of scam-centre setups, of airports and transit hubs. And I read investigative reports and, most importantly, first-person accounts of people who escaped or were rescued, because they reveal what statistics never can.

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At the same time, Press 9 for a Crime is fiction. The characters, relationships and the plotting is my imagination. The emotional journey is imagined, only the mechanics and human cost are drawn from reality. I feel a degree of satisfaction when readers and reviewers say it is ‘terrifyingly real’ because it is meant to be. I want to jolt the readers into alertness. It may save some people from losing their life savings and a lot of trauma.

 

 

RS: Atul and Aseem are contrasting siblings—one disciplined, the other impulsive. Yet the story flips expectations. What fascinated you most about exploring this dynamic and how does it shape the moral core of the novel?

 

SJ: We all must have seen the labels and roles being attached inside an Indian family, I have at least. In my novel, Atul is the disciplined one, the “responsible” son, the kind who believes planning and hard work can control outcomes. Aseem is more impulsive, more instinct-led, and is labelled to be reckless, selfish even. But the world they’re dealing with in Press 9 for a Crime doesn’t reward discipline or punish impulsiveness in predictable ways. It’s a machine designed to trap ordinary people, and when that machine enters a family, the old labels collapse. The brother you thought was solid can become vulnerable, and the brother you thought was undependable can become the one who takes responsibility.

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That flip is a plot device as well as the moral core. It forces you to confront a deeper question, in a crisis, what is courage really - planning or action, caution or risk, obedience or defiance? And it also ties to the larger paradox the book is built on, in this ecosystem, the categories we rely on - smart/naive, guilty/innocent, victim/perpetrator - are not stable. They keep shifting depending on circumstance, coercion, fear, and survival.

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So the Atul-Aseem dynamic becomes my way of dramatizing that moral complexity at home before I take you into the global crime world. Their relationship makes the thriller personal, but it also keeps the reader asking questions: Who would I be in this situation? Can I trust someone like Aseem to do the right thing? What path will the firebrand Radhika chose? And that question stays alive right till the end because the beauty of an impulsive character is that you never know what he/she will do. And even when you do, it may shock you!

 

 

RS: Fear, deception, and survival run through the book, but so does an unexpectedly strong thread of family loyalty. How do you balance visceral thriller elements with emotional vulnerability without diluting either?

 

SJ: What I really do is start by rooting the story in a family or in relationships. If there’s crime in the story, the thriller elements will come. But before that, the reader or viewer has to care - and ideally, identify - with the characters.

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From there, the balance comes from treating emotion and thrill as fuel for each other, not as separate tracks. If the thriller beats are only “clever,” they become disposable. And if the emotion is only “soft,” it becomes sentimental. So I try to make every surge of tension carry an emotional cost, and every emotional moment raise the stakes.

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I don’t think a lot about the craft, meaning the ‘How to do this or that’ part. I try to keep it simple on the page, not stopping the story for speeches or long descriptions. And I let emotion show up in choices - what a character hides, what they risk, who they protect, and what they’re willing to lose.

 

RS:  You have a celebrated screenwriting background—Grahan being a standout example. How did your experience in visual storytelling influence the pacing and structuring of this novel?

 

SJ: My experience in visual storytelling has definitely shaped how I pace and structure the novel, often at an instinctive level. When you spend years thinking visually, you start building scenes in your head by default: you enter a moment late, exit early, and make sure something changes in every unit. Even when I’m writing prose, I’m naturally looking for that cinematic rhythm - the turns in the scene and end points that compels the reader to go on.

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A novel gives you more room for interiority and texture, but I still like the narrative to move with purpose. So I have used shorter descriptions and built the story around strong set-pieces and escalation. I have used some quieter moments to deepen character and relationships. But, I could be guilty of not giving them enough breathing space. Maybe, I will become more patient as I write more novels.

 

RS: . The story exposes how easily ordinary people can be pulled into criminal networks in today’s digital world. Was there a particular incident or insight that made you realise this was a story that had to be told now?

 

SJ: Yes, there was a very specific jolt that kept me agitated for days.

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I have mentioned before the incident about a woman who was kept under “digital arrest” for days on constant video surveillance and was even forced to undress under the pretext of a “strip search.” That moment hit me because it showed how far these scams have evolved. This wasn’t just financial fraud; it was psychological captivity, built purely through manipulation and fear.

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And what made it feel urgent was that it wasn’t an isolated headline. Similar cases kept appearing, and alongside them I began seeing the other side of the same ecosystem - people being lured by foreign job promises, trafficked into scam compounds, and coerced into committing fraud. That’s when the story became bigger for me: it wasn’t about “careless victims” or “born criminals.” It was about how ordinary people like us can be pulled into a criminal network that is organised, global, and invisible. It is very clear that the digital world has changed the rules, the threat isn’t coming from a dark alley anymore, it can come through a phone call, an innocuous-looking message, or an inviting link. The only way to be safer is to talk about these dangers with each other - with family and friends - and what better way to do that than through a story.

 

 

RS:  Imtiaz Ali, Divya Prakash Dubey, and others have praised the book for its humour, sharpness, and nerve-racking realism. What was the most challenging tonal decision you had to make while writing a thriller that is both entertaining and deeply unsettling?

 

SJ: The toughest tonal decision was whether and how to let humour exist in a world that is genuinely frightening. I didn’t want the fear to feel lighter, and I also didn’t want the characters to feel unreal. I had the option of making the story more claustrophobic by making some character arcs more tragic, for example, Nitesh Mishra’s.

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But I decided to trust my voice, which comes from who I am: someone from a middle-class home, and a family man. In real life, especially in ordinary Indian families, humour is often a coping mechanism. People crack jokes to release pressure, hide anxiety, and protect dignity. So I trusted the characters and used humour depending on where we were in the overall arc. I didn’t treat it as “comic relief” inserted from outside; I tried to get it naturally from character and situation. Now in retrospect, I feel the lighter, sharper domestic moments make the danger feel even more real when it arrives, because the reader first meets these people as normal, relatable, human beings. That’s what allows the thriller to be entertaining and still leave you disturbed when you close the book.

 

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RS:  Your narrative relies heavily on atmosphere—Delhi’s claustrophobic lanes, Cambodia’s oppressive scam hubs. How consciously do you use setting as a literary device to mirror the psychological states of your characters?

 

SJ: I try to use setting very consciously, but “atmosphere” is not the goal. It should complement the character’s situation and need. In other words, the idea is to let the setting come in organically, not to decorate the scene. In my short film Tumhare Bina, which is about loss, longing and loneliness, I leaned on sensory elements like touch and smell, because grief and longing are often physical before they become verbal.

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In Press 9 for a Crime, I tried to see the Anand family’s house almost as a character. In overcrowded, lower-middle-class neighbourhoods, a home gives you little isolation. The walls are thin, the lanes are narrow, houses are touching each other, and life keeps leaking in and out - sounds, smells, voices, arguments, pressure. It’s as if the house is constantly interacting with the ecosystem around it, letting things through. That lack of privacy becomes part of the family’s day-to-day reality.

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And then, when the story shifts to Cambodia, the setting mirrors a prison - literally and psychologically - oppressive, controlled, and under surveillance. So yes, it’s conscious to some extent, but it always comes from the story and the characters.

 

RS: Press 9 for a Crime blends journalistic sharpness with the emotional depth of literary fiction. Did your years in news shape your prose style—its attention to detail, rhythm, and tension? How do you negotiate that boundary between reportage and storytelling?

 

SJ: Honestly, I didn’t do much writing till I was in news. I started writing consistently around 2018, and it has always been stories. But yes, years of supervising and running a newsroom, reading and reacting to reports written by others, has certainly influenced my writing. I think brevity comes from there as well as this idea of creating a hook early on..

I’d say the journalist in me is most active during research and while building the world. Once that foundation is in place, the storyteller takes over.

 

RS: What next?

 

SJ: I see myself as a storyteller. I’m not loyal to a format, I’m in love with the story. Film, series, novel… these are just different mediums, and I hope to use them to tell as many stories as I can. Right now, I’m working on a film and a series, and I’ve also written a few chapters of another novel. Let’s see which one of them comes out first.

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And alongside telling my own stories, I’d also like to help others tell theirs - whether they’re writing fiction, writing for the screen, or trying to adapt their written work for screen. If my journey can make that path a little clearer for other writers, I’d be glad to be part of it.

 

Thank you Shailendra for taking time out to talk about your book with The Wise Owl. Here is wishing you the very best in all your creative endeavours.