The first, his biological father, was a village priest who was arrested for killing Gaitonde's mother after she was unfaithful. In flashbacks, Gaitonde speaks of having had "three fathers" along his path to becoming a criminal. Sartaj traces Gaitonde's location to a discreet safehouse, but Gaitonde shoots himself in the head when he is confronted. He begins receiving calls from Ganesh Gaitonde, a wanted gangster who warns him that something destructive will happen in Mumbai within 25 days, and that everyone in the city will die except for someone named "Trivedi." Gaitonde recounts his life story to Sartaj over the calls, and claims to know Sartaj's late father, himself a policeman. Mumbai police inspector Sartaj Singh lives alone, having divorced his wife, and is disgusted by the corruption within the rest of the police force. A total of 16 episodes have aired over the two seasons with eight in each. The second season premiered on 15 August 2019. The first season premiered on 5 July 2018 on Netflix and received positive reviews with particular praise on performances and writing. Each episode of Sacred Games is named after a story or character derived from Hindu mythology.
The first season of the series was mostly shot in Mumbai the second season was shot over different locations of Delhi, Mombasa, Nairobi, Cape Town and Johannesburg. The second season was directed by Kashyap and Neeraj Ghaywan. Aarti Bajaj was the editor and Alokananda Dasgupta composed the background score. Swapnil Sonawane, Sylvester Fonseca and Aseem Bajaj served as director of photography. Varun Grover, Smita Singh, and Vasant Nath wrote the episodes of the first season Grover, Dhruv Narang, Nihit Bhave, and Pooja Tolani wrote the second season. They opted to adapt Chandra's English novel in the Hindi language, to which Motwane agreed. The series was conceived after Erik Barmack, the vice-president of Netflix, contacted Motwane in 2014 to create Indian content for the platform. Other cast members include Radhika Apte, Girish Kulkarni, Neeraj Kabi, Geetanjali Thapa, Jeetendra Joshi, Rajshri Deshpande, Karan Wahi, Aamir Bashir, Jatin Sarna, Elnaaz Norouzi Kubra Sait, Surveen Chawla, Pankaj Tripathi, Kalki Koechlin, and Ranvir Shorey. The series chronicles the events that follow while tracing Gaitonde's past. The story follows a troubled police officer, Sartaj Singh (played by Saif Ali Khan), who receives a phone call from gangster Ganesh Gaitonde (played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui) Gaitonde tells him to save the city within 25 days. Created by Vikramaditya Motwane, the first season was directed by Motwane and Anurag Kashyap, who produced it under their banner Phantom Films. Sacred Games is an Indian streaming television thriller series based on Vikram Chandra's 2006 novel of the same name.