C. W. Rand of the ICS was appointed to take charge of the plague control measures and had successfully contained the epidemic; but his methods of evacuating the people, of fumigating their dwellings, and burning the contaminated articles, evoked tremendous hatred amongst certain sections of the society, which led to his assassination.

"It was a straight shot of nine minutes and 57 seconds without any retakes simply because we could not afford to waste footage" The film is based on true life events leading up to, and the consequences of, the assassination of Charles Walter Rand, Assistant Collector of Pune and Chairman of the Special Plague Committee, Pune, and British Army officer Lt Charles Egerton Ayerst.

Jayoo Patwardhan scouted for locations in Wai and Pune for the period look, poring over scores of photographs obtained by her grandfather, and spending months researching the details.

In his autobiography, Damodar Hari writes that he believed the jubilee celebrations would cause Europeans of all ranks to go to the Government House, and this would give them the opportunity to kill Rand.

The swords and the hatchet they carried made a movement without raising suspicion difficult, so they deposited them under a stone culvert near the bungalow, so as to retrieve it in case of need.

As planned, Damodar Hari waited at the gate of the Government House, and as Rand's carriage emerged, ran 10–15 paces behind it.

As the carriage reached the yellow bungalow, Damodar made up the distance and called out "Gondya", a predetermined signal for Balkrishna to take action.

It finds the faces, mostly from Marathi stage, powerful in their authenticity, chiselled of grim determination, with firelight dancing on them, rugged stone walls, skirting narrow paths, the pillared inner courtyards of traditional dwellings, all into place in an intensely moving dramatic experience.

[10] Mukta Rajadhyaksha, Mumbai based theatre and media critic, writing in The Times of India, considers this film an honourable exception amid the degeneration that Marathi cinema went through after its golden age, the decades of the 50s and 60s.

[11] Namrata Joshi writing for Outlook opines that commercial Marathi cinema did not benefit from arthouse films made by filmmakers like Jabbar Patel (Sinhasan, Umbartha), Jayoo and Nachiket Patwardhan (22 June 1897), Vijaya Mehta (Smriti Chitre), Amol Palekar (Bangarwadi), Sumitra Bhave and others.

[13] The film was released on its 25th anniversary, by Rudraa Home Video in its 'Modern Classic' series on 22 June 2005, VCDs with English subtitles and each original VCD.