Rajesh Kumar is the pseudonym of KR Rajagopal,[1] a Tamil author of crime fiction.
Kumar's first published story was in 1968[2] or 1969,[3] in the college magazine of Government Arts College, Coimbatore, where he earned a degree in botany.[4] He has attributed this to a prank by another student, who used Kumar's name when volunteering to submit a story for the magazine;[2] when his professor refused to allow Kumar to back out,[5] "the next day"[2] he "reluctantly" submitted "Vaazhndhu Kaatuvom", a love story.[5]
Later that year, he submitted the crime story "Unnai Vidamaatten" to a short story contest in Malai Murasu; this was the first story for which he was paid.[5]
In 1977, his work began appearing in Kumudam, starting with the short story "Idhu Nyayama".[5]
His first novel, Vaadagaiku Oru Uyir,[5] was published in 1980.[1] He subsequently told of how the editor of Kumudam had "seen a porter on a platform at Egmore Railway Station engrossed in one of [Kumar's] stories. The porter had also forgone customers just to finish the story. It was then that [the editor] decided to make [Kumar] write a novel."[3]
In 1986, his publisher asked him if he could produce a novel a month; as a result, he became a full-time writer.[5]
As of 2019, Kumar has written over 1500 novels;[dubious – discuss] his son, for whom digitizing the novels into e-books is a full-time profession, has been able to locate "around 1,000" of them.[6] He has also written over 2000 short stories, and scripts for over 250 television series,[1] as well as the 2015 film Sandamarutham.[7]
In 2019, he announced that he was negotiating with Sathya Jyothi Films regarding adaptations of his work on Amazon Prime.[6][needs update]