Daayra

Daayra poses an interesting question concerning the relationship between law and morality: if culprits are likely to get away with murder, is it acceptable to take the law into one’s own hands and deliver justice? And who gets to decide the quantum of punishment, assuming the accused are indeed guilty of a heinous crime? Are extrajudicial killings justified in such circumstances? Meghna Gulzar’s film raises several thorny questions. That is essentially the point of the story, though the film becomes somewhat heavy-handed in making it.

Daayra opens with a city in celebration. It looks like a festival—the streets are teeming, sweets are distributed, fireworks set off. Eventually, the hero of the hour arrives: DCP Raman Kumar (Prithviraj Sukumaran), who led the team that shot and killed four men accused of rape. Officially, it was in self-defense, but no one, not the cops or the revelers, pretends it’s anything but an encounter killing. Meghna Gulzar’s film is loosely based on the 2019 Hyderabad rape case, in which the accused were killed in police custody and the cops widely praised afterwards. It offers the illusion of balance, but its heart is with the celebrating public. A week after the deaths, DCP Ajooni Kohli (Kareena Kapoor Khan) of the Special Investigative Team is tasked with looking into the case after human rights activists raise concerns. In contrast to Raman’s heroic introduction, we first meet Ajooni conducting a comic sting operation on an avocado-desiring inmate—a small clue to how the film sees their respective roles.

Coming at a time when society is increasingly seduced by the idea of instant, extra-judicial justice, Meghna Gulzar’s Daayra takes a diagnostic look at the rot within the body politic where ‘encounters’ are routinely packaged and sold as desperate acts of self-defence, and a frustrated public gleefully buys it for the wheel of justice is excruciatingly slow. Heavily informed by the details and fallout of the 2019 Hyderabad case, the film takes away the sensationalised, high-octane tropes synonymous with Bollywood police procedurals that have long normalised law enforcement officers becoming a law unto themselves.

Do the ends ever truly justify the means? Can justice be meted out by those sworn merely to enforce the law? When two starkly contrasting police officers are drawn into the investigation of a young girl’s brutal disappearance and murder, these questions—among several others—confront the edifice of law with unsettlingly plausible answers. Meghna Gulzar’s latest offering, Daayra, starring Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran as the two investigating officers, reopens an age-old debate: the tension between law and morality, between justice and vengeance. The narrative unfolds against a harrowing crime scene, framed by a mother’s desperate plea for justice.

Every time Meghna Gulzar makes a film, there is excitement among film lovers. She has given us films like Talvar and Raazi, and she has consistently chosen stories that make you think beyond the film itself. So naturally, expectations are high with Daayra. The trailer tells you pretty much what to expect — one crime, two senior cops, two very different ways of looking at justice, and a clash of ideologies. The film begins with DCP Raman Kumar, played by Prithviraj Sukumaran, being celebrated after an encounter in which he and his team kill four men accused of raping and murdering a young girl. Raman is a cop who believes in putting together a strong team, giving an investigation his time and dedication, and doing whatever it takes to solve a case.

In some of her better films, Meghna Gulzar’s determined wading into morally complex territory has left us questioning our beliefs about right and wrong. Her best work remains ‘Talvar’, in which the murder of a 14-year-old girl laid bare the hypocrisies in the way we judge young adolescents and parenting, which neatly carved out the pro-and-anti maxxers: the questions swirling around the murder still haunt us. In ‘Daayra’, the director attempts to take the discomfort several notches higher. The plot appears to have been based on the killing of four Hyderabad men who were taken to the spot where they had allegedly raped and killed a young woman. Meant to be a re-creation of the crime, it ended up in the deaths of all the suspects, leaving in its wake the thorny question: who decides the quantum of punishment?