On December 2, YRF Entertainment, from Yash Raj Films, announced its first web series, titled The Railway Men. The series will be a tribute to the unsung heroes of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy, the workers at the Bhopal railway station who saved several lives during the dreadful incident.

Starring R. Madhavan, Kay Kay Menon, Divyenndu Sharma and Babil Khan, son of late Irrfan Khan, the series will be directed by Shiv Rawail and is likely to release in December 2022. 

In a statement, Yogendra Mogre, executive producer at YRF Entertainment stated, "The Railway Men is our salute to their spirit, their courage, and their humanity. This is a story that needed to be told. We are not going to leave any stone unturned to ensure that this story reaches out to audiences, across the world, in the best possible way so that they can understand the depth of devastation that this tragedy has caused in India."

Dil Bekaraar scene
In Dil Bekaraar, actor Akshay Oberoi plays a print journalist chasing stories from the Bhopal Gas TragedyTwitter

Recently, another web series titled Dil Bekaraar, a book adaption of author Anuja Chauhan's Those Pricey Thakur Girls based in the late 80s, reintroduced its viewers to the tragic history of the Bhopal Gas Leak and showed glimpses of its aftermath impacting print & broadcast media and political scenario back in the Doordarshan days. Apart from serving nostalgia to its viewers, it also highlighted significant issues surrounding the tragedy and the cover-ups that followed.  

Entertainment and recreation have definitely come a long way since then. From waiting for weeks or months to complete a television series, to binge-watching a whole series over a weekend through online viewing platforms with the so-called OTTs (Over The Top) waiting to tell unmissable stories. 

So far, the Bhopal gas tragedy was either restricted to news or documentaries or award-winning non-commercial films incapable of reaching out to a wider audience. Kay Kay Menon, who has now been signed for YRF's The Railway Men, in fact, acted in the 1999 film Bhopal Express based on the lives of a newly-wed couple affected by the gas tragedy. The film was released on Bhopal Gas Tragedy's 16th anniversary.