The exploits of Mumbai police officer Madhukar Zende inspired Akshay Shah’s engaging documentary Zende in 2023. Zende has also written his memoir, Mumbai’s Most Wanted: The Thrilling Case Files of a Supercop. The Netflix film Inspector Zende explores the larger-than-life cop’s pursuit of the half-Indian and half-Vietnamese murderer Charles Sobhraj, renamed as Carl Bhojraj presumably to avoid a lawsuit.

Chinmay D Mandlekar’s Hindi movie stars Manoj Bajpayee as Zende and Jim Sarbh as Bhojraj alongside Bhalchandra Kadam, Sachin Khedekar, Girija Oak and Harish Dudhade.