The uncanny similarities between Anand Swarnakar, Vijay Varma's evil character in the web series 'Dahaad', and the serial killer notorious as 'Cyanide Mohan' have not escaped people familiar with the real-life story. What's striking, though, is the silence of the 'Dahaad' makers -- Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti's Excel Entertainment -- on the inspiration for the show.

Mohan Kumar Vivekanand, aka 'Cyanide Mohan', was a soft-spoken physical education teacher between 1980 and 2003 before his arrest at his home village outside Mangaluru, Karnataka, in 2009. In 'Dahaad', Anand Swarnakar teaches Hindi in a women's college in Rajasthan. But that is where the dissimilarities end.