Accused

These days, the Kashyaps seem keenly interested in stories that probe the steep personal toll exacted by success, ambition, and power. Even as Anurag Kashyap’s Bandar gets a date in theatres, sister Anubhuti Kashyap observes the post-#MeToo landscape through a perceptive lens in this Netflix original. A cross between psychological drama and a taut thriller, Accused stars Konkona Sensharma as Dr. Geetika Sen, a celebrated queer surgeon, and Pratibha Ranta as her partner, Dr. Meera, who has travelled from a conservative Meerut to the accepting lap of London.

The intent is to normalise gay relationships, a gay marriage in this case, where the focus is on the story and not on raising eyebrows over sexual preferences. To that extent director Anubhuti Kashyap, and writers Sima Agarwal and Yash Keswani pull it off. Once Dr Geetika Sen (Konkona Sen Sharma) and “wife” Dr Meera (Pratibha Ranta) are accepted by the viewer just as casually as the people in their workplace do, it’s the investigation into a sexual misconduct case that should be the focus.

Q: You know what they say about good surgeons? A: Their hands never shake. This pops up in more than one conversation in Accused. What it attempts to convey is the sudden turmoil that Geetika Sen (Konkona Sensharma) finds herself in. A celebrated gynaecologist in the UK, Geetika has it all — a career on the upswing, a steady marriage (with Meera, a paediatrician played by Pratibha Rannta) and a reputation that she has painstakingly built over the years. However, Geetika’s life undergoes a seismic shift when she is accused of sexual misconduct at work. What starts off as an anonymous allegation quickly turns into a collective pointing of fingers, threatening to upend all that Geetika has at present and aspires for in the future.

An unmistakable air of caution encumbers Anubhuti Kashyap’s Accused, which unravels when a woman and her wife are thrown in a spot. Konkona Sensharma plays Dr Geetika Sen, a reputed UK-based gynaecologist on the brink of promotion preparing to move into a bigger home and adopt a baby with her doting partner Meera (Pratibha Rannta), a paediatrician still trying to find her bearings. Bliss is brief after Geetika is suspected of sexual misconduct at work.

Accused dives straight in. It has no time to mess around. We are parachuted into the life of Dr. Geetika Sen (Konkona Sen Sharma), a senior surgeon at a London hospital: smart, confident, married, on the brink of a major promotion and a move to Chester. She’s a taskmaster, but so good at her job that her social identity — a queer South Asian immigrant — is a footnote. Until it isn’t. HR receives an anonymous email by a patient accusing Geetika of predatory behavior and sexual harassment. Just like that, this life starts to unravel. Seeds of uncertainty are planted in the head of her wife, Meera (Pratibha Ranta), a doctor at a children’s hospital herself. Social media puts her on trial. Her colleagues look at her differently. An investigation begins. The film points in both directions, of course. Geetika’s personality is scrutinized in a way that invites the average viewer to interpret complexity as culpability. It says something that, even as an alleged perpetrator, she gets the victim beatdown: her past is dug up, mistakes are weaponised, judgment errors are revealed, evidence of moral ambiguity is shown, credibility is doubted. In short, she is viewed as guilty until proven innocent.