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'Raakh' actor on playing serial killer Babu: 'My Instagram is filled with hate messages'
Actor Akash Makhija opens up about his 14-year struggle and the role that has garnered him widespread acclaim
- PUBLISHED: Wed 8 Jul 2026, 1:46 PM
You might remember him in passing in Rajkummar Rao’s Bhool Chook Maaf and Gram Chikitsalay on Amazon Prime. But his recent role as a brutal rapist and killer in the Amazon Prime series Raakh is what has won him praise all over the world.
Meet Akash Makhija, who played the mercurial and angsty Babu fashioned after real life killer Billa of the infamous Billa-Ranga duo, who kidnapped, raped and killed several children in the 1970s in India. Brought to justice and hanged to death eventually, their brutality and violence is still talked about in several web serials and films.
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Makhija landed the part of Babu, after several auditions and wasn’t even the initial choice for the role that had 800 people auditioning. He credits it to destiny and his 14 years of constant struggle to establish himself in the Hindi film industry and OTT space. Having been part of projects with Manoj Bajpai and Rajkummar Rao, Makhija finally had fame knock on his door.
But you must know that the most hated and admired actor on OTT has been bashed on social media, though admired for his acting prowess. “My Insta messages are filled with hate and abuses. One young mother wrote to me saying that she gets her son to eat threatening him that Babu will arrive, if he refuses food.” A phenomenon once associated with Gabbar Singh, a dacoit played by late actor Amjad Khan in the film Sholay.
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Does playing the antihero draw in the eye balls and attention? For Akash though, it was the process of getting into this evil character’s head, living his life and then putting out what the character demanded. “Prosit Roy sir, our director wanted to make audiences believe that these dangerous minds are part of the same world we live in. They could be next to us, lurking in the same neighborhood, be the boy next door. So I was advised to blend not stand out - to make the crime look vile. Also I was told to not watch anything from the real crime files and sketch the character of Babu on my own.”
Akash went through workshops with Shashi Bhushan and Nitin Goel. They discussed that the character of Babu is bereft of human emotion and is totally unpredictable. Quite like a lot of animals when they are hunting, are territorial, frightened, fearful or are fleeing. Babu is a tiger at one point, aggressive and ready to kill, like a snake slinking away into the dark shadows to escape the police and to manipulate his accomplice in crime, he acts docile like a cow."
Not being famous till Raakh arrived, worked for Akash. “I have worked all these years but people don’t have any memory of me. So there were no expectations, that might have happened if I was famous.”
Since there was no reference to a previous role, it helped him explore his zone better. “I got that unpredictability of the character in my inner world. It also appeared when I couldn’t say the same lines during retakes, I became that unpredictable,” he laughs.
When asked what the most difficult scene to enact from the series was, the actor responded, “The car scene where the kids are in the backseat and me and my co-star Ramandeep are screaming and driving. It was mentally exhausting with several retakes, the rain outside and the claustrophobia. We shot for 17-18 hours with prosthesis on me. But it was all worth it. The child actors were so good.”
From being rejected across so many auditions in so many years, Akash feels grateful and is annoyed when people tell him he is lucky. “I worked 14 years to get this lucky,” he says.
Akash lives in a joint family and when he sees his nephews roam around the living room when the series is playing he shuts off the TV. “When they turn 18, they can watch it,” he says. But they are getting to know of his fame. “I went to pick up my nephew from kindergarten and his teachers recognised me and some photos were taken. My nephew asked me how they knew me. I had to tell him that they know me for the wrong reasons.”
Accolades poured in when Karan Johar recommended the show, Rajkummar Rao reached out to him and industry seniors called to congratulate him. “I loved Bhiku Mhatre’s character in Satya. What a film it is! I watched Trapped and was mesmerised. I am grateful to receive this kind of praise. I am forever inspired by actors and not stars.”
During the making of Raakh, Akash married his childhood sweetheart Roshni Budhiraja. They also belong to the same spiritual group Sant Nirankari. “She was a good friend and eventually the first girl I dated. It is blissful to be married to her,” he says.
He is now shooting for Gram Chikitsalay Season 2 that has been his “therapy”. “Comedy is my favourite genre. In school, I used to enact Paresh Raval’s character Baburao from Golmaal and ironically Babu became my biggest role till date, albeit in a stark dark way.”