Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar (2015) presents three perspectives on the 2008 Noida double murder case, but it makes no secret about what it really believes, lamenting a system for not doing its job. Gulzar’s Chhapaak (2020) is based on the courageous life of acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal, but exposes a system that makes little difference even if it does its job. Both films are shaped by the frustration of operating within the porous framework of law and order, in a patriarchal nation where nothing except headlines change. Gulzar’s latest, Daayra, completes this social-postmortem trilogy. The frustration has mutated into unbridled rage.
Loosely inspired by the 2019 Hyderabad gang-rape and murder — where four suspects are arrested for the chilling rape of a 26-year-old veterinary doctor, and then ‘killed’ in police custody — the theme reaches its natural conclusion. The passing mention of an acid-attack case and the role of an ‘Aarushi’ dhaba during the search are distinct markers of this escalation. As if to suggest: one can no longer expect a broken system to do its job, so the only language of justice is revenge. And as if to say: the only function of law enforcement is perhaps the failure to enforce.
The narrative revolves around two police teams across two timelines. The manhunt led by DCP Raman Kumar (Prithviraj Sukumaran) — a cop recognised for his record of encounter killings — is intercut with the investigation of his unit by Internal Vigilance Officer Ajooni Kohli (Kareena Kapoor Khan). Ajooni and her Special Investigation Team (SIT) colleagues arrive in the semi-fictional town during nationwide celebrations after the not-so-mysterious deaths of the accused. Their job is to trace the incident, understand all dimensions of the crime, and interrogate the uniformed “heroes” in the aftermath.
They’re a bit like the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) experts in Sully, who are tasked with puncturing the euphoric American mood by questioning the heroic captain and co-pilot after they landed an airplane on the Hudson. Except Sully didn’t game the system. Ajooni’s work allows the tragedy to reveal itself in non-linear parts. She has no doubt that Raman and his subordinates staged the killings, but she keeps getting humbled by the moral ambiguity of the case. Both Raman and Ajooni are by-the-book professionals; only, one’s book is incompatible with the other.
Unlike Talvar, Daayra hides behind the illusion of perspective. The dramatisation pits the righteous cop against the self-righteous cop. The male saviour with anger issues is chased by the female monitor with a conscience. But it’s hardly a cat-and-mouse game. The film puts forward opposing sides in Raman and Ajooni. The implication might be that neither is wrong — both swear by the line “let the law do its duty” — but the designs aren’t subtle. One is simply more right than the other. Because Daayra is essentially a rape-and-revenge thriller disguised as a police procedural. The main problem isn’t that the story has a strong and controversial stance; it’s that it pretends to be complex and balanced. Using a song with literal lyrics like ‘alag alag aaine’ (different looking-glasses) for a shot of two characters walking away from each other feels like a last-ditch attempt to reclaim the alleged nuances.
This fury is slowly constructed across the movie. It infects the film-making. Broad strokes are employed to expose the rot. For instance, the inspector of the police station that first receives the complaint is painted as one of those paan-chewing ‘90s shopkeepers who scoff at poor and old people. The mother and brother of the victim go from pillar to post in search of basic help, but there’s a sense that the film is milking their agony to make its point. The background score is restrained, but the writing fills in for it. There are times when the SIT officers walk out after detailed chats with the family and tearfully conclude: “they only had to do their bloody job”.
Ajooni even wonders aloud about the future to drive home the point: the character assassination of the victim to follow, the indignations of having to fight for closure, the sensationalist coverage. The film builds its case, and its bias is baked into the craft, until an intense third act — where the explicit incident is juxtaposed with the rainy night of the encounter — is made to unfold like poetic justice. The duality of these parallel scenes is amplified: words are echoed, frames find their counterparts, fear is compared. The script goes out of its way to bolster its argument, with a ‘cameo’ of the former juvenile offender in the 2012 Nirbhaya case.
There’s more evidence in the way any doubters of Raman Kumar become the weakest links of the film — be it Ajooni Kohli, her ‘intro’ scene as an undercover cop, her clever team members, their time in the guesthouse, the media, or the ‘reconstruction’ moments. The writing does not seem as interested in Ajooni, the hostility she’s welcomed with, and her half-hearted backstory. It’s far from Kareena Kapoor Khan’s finest performance, largely because the brief is to retain her glamour and weaponise it as a gotcha-coded interrogator. At times, the miscast Ajooni sounds a lot like Poo in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham playfully interviewing her nephew after the Vande Mataram scene. I get the logic of pitting two Indian superstars against each other. It’s hard to see either character as the wilier or lesser one; they must both stand their (shaky) ground, but they’re also treated as fourth-wall-shattering placeholders for contrasting truths.
The film’s most convincing stretch is, not surprisingly, Kumar’s rapid investigation and the carefully planned manhunt. The rhythm and flow, the acting, the narrative tension, the rawness of the chase and crackdowns — they’re all on point, bringing to mind Gulzar’s heady form in both Talvar and Raazi. You’d think that DSP Kumar, who has a proper entry shot as the hero being lauded by the country, is going to be the one with the fuller personality. But Prithviraj Sukumaran’s aura means that the man has no history at all. He’s just an angry crusader who has his own punishment mechanisms in place after seeing the society fail its women in a post-Nirbhaya India. This is the only subtext offered, that too only if you listen very closely. Otherwise he’s just a superhero masquerading as a poker-faced DSP, with a wife (barely), subordinates who respect him (Jitendra Joshi again offers compelling ‘greyness’ as a cop), and a boss who supports him as a co-conspirator.
Is he giving the citizens what they want? Is his well-rehearsed audacity reserved only for high-profile cases? Does he like the fame? What’s his deal? There is no space for character-building, the odd punchline aside. There’s a montage in which he drags a guilty inspector along with him to record statements at other police stations where disappearances were reported. Every time an unclaimed body is mentioned, Kumar glares at the inspector and taunts him. Sukumaran’s star-power comes to the fore here, but it’s in the wrong movie; it would’ve been more impactful if we knew anything (more) about his nobility. There’s also the sense that the film would rather blame the rotten eggs than the administrations that enable them. We know that Kumar and gang do not trust the process, thereby creating and concealing their own methods, but they are not allowed to be political figures; the script is too afraid, too isolated, to go there.
But the elephant in the circular room of Daayra is the public rage it taps. It’s a slippery slope; it goes so far as to provoke the audience into believing that ‘well-intentioned’ encounters are nothing but fast-tracked capital punishments. Regardless of whether one agrees with the film’s take on kangaroo-court sentencing, it bats for the ethical legitimacy of a trial by public opinion (and shock). The intention is to make us reach a stage where legal vigilantism feels like catharsis. The motive is to push us to the brink of needing primal answers to hopeless questions. It’s a less insidious version of jingoistic entertainers dehumanising opponents until violence against them feels like a release. A triumph. The most necessary option. The persecution complex and bloodlust it feeds on is familiar; only the lens is slightly different. That’s not to discredit the brutality of such crimes, the suffering of the families, or the citizen-averse ways of the judiciary. It’s all there. But movies like Daayra are defined by the thin line between difficult stories and dangerous storytelling.