Inspector Zende

70 के दशक में ‘बिकनी किलर’ के नाम से मशहूर हुए और दिल्ली की तिहाड़ जेल से कैदियों व स्टाफ को नशीला खाना खिला कर फरार हुए कुख्यात अपराधी चार्ल्स शोभराज पर दुनिया भर में किताबें लिखी गईं और उसकी कहानी को सिनेमा में भी उतारा गया। तो नेटफ्लिक्स पर आई इस फिल्म में नया क्या हो सकता है? जवाब है-यह फिल्म चार्ल्स की बजाय मुंबई पुलिस के उन इंस्पैक्टर मधुकर झेंडे के बारे में है जिन्होंने चार्ल्स को पहले 1971 में पकड़ा था और फिर 1986 में उसके तिहाड़ से भागने के बाद गोआ से। चूंकि चार्ल्स ने अपनी कहानी के अधिकार यहां-वहां बेचे हुए हैं इसलिए इस फिल्म में सिर्फ इंस्पैक्टर झेंडे का नाम असली है और बाकी सब के नाम, काम बदल दिए गए हैं। मसलन चार्ल्स शोभराज यहां कार्ल भोजराज है, ‘बिकनी किलर’ की बजाय ‘स्विमसूट किलर’ है, नशीले खाने की बजाय नशीली खीर है, वगैरह-वगैरह…! लेकिन इससे क्या फर्क पड़ता है, कहानी मज़ेदार होनी चाहिए, काल्पनिक हो या वास्तविक। और बस, यहीं आकर यह फिल्म मात खा गई है क्योंकि इसे ‘मज़ेदार’ बनाने के लिए जो रंग-ढंग चुने गए हैं उससे यह हल्की, कमज़ोर और उथली हुई है।

After a notorious serial killer, Carl Bhojraj, escapes from Tihar Jail, Mumbai cop Zende, who had previously caught him 15 years ago, is tasked to find him again. With a small team, Zende pursues the elusive criminal across cities, using his instincts and old-school policing to track him down. The cat-and-mouse chase culminates in Goa, where the team uses their wits to capture Carl. Inspector Zende puts Manoj Bajpayee in a similar spot as The Family Man – a duty-bound officer, alternating between familial priorities and work, but with stronger moral support. He lends delicate, subtle comedy touches to the role and also shows Zende’s firmness about his stance, both at home and at duty. The balance that Bajpayee brings to the part is indeed one of the film’s sweeter spots.

In the pantheon of real-life criminals that Indian filmmakers love to recreate on screen, Charles Sobhraj perhaps tops the list. The serial killer’s exploits are expounded with such reverence that the law enforcers appear pygmies in front of him. The latest being Black Warrant on Netflix. Debutant director Chinmay Mandlekar’s Inspector Zende finally turns the tables on him by revealing what happens after his daring escape from Tihar Prison in 1986. Though a worthy documentary on Madhukar Zende exists, it is surprising that Bollywood has taken such a long time to document the distinguished Mumbai Police officer who nabbed Sobhraj twice, without making a fuss. How it missed the attention of Akshay Kumar is a mystery!

Bikini Killer Charles Sobhraj, as he was gleefully dubbed by the tabloid press because many of his early hippie-trail victims were attired thus, never goes out of vogue. Just when you think there can’t be yet another iteration of his life and amazingly criminal times, up he pops again. Earlier this year, we had his character appear in a web-series (Black Warrant) ensemble; now he’s sharing equal space in a feature based on the exploits of real-life cop Madhukar Bapurao Zende who nabbed the dreaded criminal from Goa’s famed O Coqueiro restaurant. This is not myth, as many spin-off Sobhraj stories inevitably were; it is fact, causing the eatery to become a local landmark.

Writer and director Chinmay D Mandlekar’s Netflix movie Inspector Zende is loosely based on the story of Inspector Madhukar Bapurao Zende capturing the dreaded criminal Carl Sobraj in 1986. The story starts off when the mastermind criminal Carl Bhojraj (Jim Sarbh) is serving sentence in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. One fine day, he succeeds in escaping from the prison along with his gang members. They later enter Mumbai. Hence, the case comes under Mumbai Police’s jurisdiction. The Director General of Mumbai Police Purandhare (Sachin Khedekar) hands over the task of nabbing Bhojraj to Inspector Madhukar Bapurao Zende (Manoj Bajpayee). Apart from he being a reputed cop, the reason for asking Zende to lead the case is that he had heroically caught Bhojraj in 1971. Zende gets along the task with his team comprising of fellow cops Patil (Bhalchandra Kadam) and others. The makers make it clear in the initial disclaimer that the film is only loosely based on the real story of Inspector Zende and that they have added a lot of fiction. But even then, the creative liberties turn out to be a bit too much as soon as the film starts. You wonder why the real story of a heroic cop is told in a comedy manner and that too slapstick humour in some places.

Inspector Zende, written and directed by Chinmay Mandlekar, announces itself as “a story inspired by true events that looks like a fairy tale”. It’s meant as parody, not fact, but even judged on those terms, the film struggles. International Indian-Vietnamese criminal Charles Sobhraj has previously been captured in filmed entertainment in Black Warrant, Main Aur Charles and The Serpent, while Madhukar Zende, who gained national fame after the famous arrest of Sobhraj in Goa, was also the subject of a 2023 documentary called Zende. Mandlekar’s Netflix film opens in Bombay, 1986, but the characters refer to the city as Mumbai, the first of many period inconsistencies since the city’s name didn’t officially change till 1995. The film reimagines Charles Sobhraj, the notorious 1970s conman and serial killer, as Carl Bhojraj (Jim Sarbh). In 1986, Sobhraj, or in this case Bhojraj, escaped from Tihar Jail after drugging duty officers and slipping out with four fellow inmates. Enter Inspector Zende (Manoj Bajpayee), the cop who once arrested the international criminal in 1971, and is now tasked with bringing him in again.

The story of Charles Sobhraj is not new… we have seen his criminal life unfold on the big screen more than once. Back in 2015, Randeep Hooda’s ‘Main Aur Charles’ constructed the notorious criminal through the eyes of police officer Amod Kanth. More recently, Vikramaditya Motwane’s web series ‘Black Warrant’ on Tihar jail had Sobhraj as one of its key characters. And then there has been BBC’s drama series ‘The Serpent’. So, what can ‘Inspector Zende’, based on the escape and capture, rather recapture, of the dreaded serial killer offer? For starters, it introduces us to Inspector Madhukar Bapurao Zende (Manoj Bajpayee). The spin is kind of new and ‘Inspector Zende’ is couched as a comedy. A tall order, indeed! Making the tale of a dreaded criminal on the run funny is not everyone’s forte, even when you have a stellar actor like Bajpayee in the saddle. He makes you chuckle here and there, but as his character of Inspector Zende asks one of his colleagues, “Why don’t you laugh?”, the query could well apply to us too.

In the Netflix streaming canon, the film Inspector Zende begins where the series Black Warrant ends. It’s 1986, and deadly “Bikini Killer” Charles Sobhraj escapes Tihar jail after drugging the whole prison on his birthday. The six-episode drama hinted at how he managed to break out. The guards were too busy being the protagonists of their own stories of systemic struggle. Sobhraj, a peripheral figure in his decade there, simply took advantage of their main-character energy. Far away in Bombay, waiting in a milk queue, Inspector Madhukar Zende (Manoj Bajpayee) hears the news bulletin on a radio. By the time the others in the line look at him, he’s already gone — like a middle-class superhero looking for a phone-booth to don his cape. Only here, the booth is his modest family room in a chawl, and his cape is the Bombay police uniform. He expects a call any moment, given that he’s one of the few cops to have previously nabbed the criminal.