Inspector Zende

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.

70-80 के दशक में बिकिनी किलर के नाम से मशहूर कुख्यात अपराधी चार्ल्स शोभराज को तो हर कोई जानता है, पर उसे दो बार पकड़ने वाले मुंबई पुलिस के दिलेर इंस्पेक्टर मधुकर झेंडे के कारनामे कम ही लोगों को पता हैं। मनोज बाजपेयी की यह फिल्म ‘इंस्पेक्टर झेंडे’ हर हाल में अपनी ड्यूटी को आगे रखने वाले इसी कर्तव्यनिष्ठ पुलिस ऑफिसर की कहानी है। 80 के दशक में सेट इस कहानी की शुरुआत स्विम सूट किलर कार्ल भोजराज (जिम सर्भ) के दिल्ली के तिहाड़ जेल से फरार होने की खबर से होती है। यह खबर सुनते ही मुंबई में दूध की लाइन में खड़े इंस्पेक्टर मधुकर झेंडे (मनोज बाजपेयी) के कान खड़े हो जाते हैं। असल में, झेंडे 1971 में एक बार कार्ल को पकड़ चुके थे, लेकिन अब वह फरार हो गया। ऐसे में, कार्ल को दोबारा पकड़कर वह पुलिस के दामन पर लगा दाग मिटाना चाहते हैं। शहर के डीआईजी (सचिन खेडेकर) भी झेंडे पर भरोसा जताते हैं और उन्हें अपनी टीम के साथ कार्ल को दोबारा दबोचने के सीक्रेट मिशन पर लगा देते हैं।

Inspector Zende, led by Manoj Bajpayee and Jim Sarbh, is directed by Chinmay Mandlekar and follows the story based on real incidents in the 1990s as the Mumbai police tries to catch a dangerous escaped convict from Tihar Jail. The team of Mumbai police officers is led by Madhukar Bapurao Zende, who knows the convict and had previously caught him. The film brings a comic aspect to the real story, which sits well with the simple, wholesome nostalgia of the 90s. The film begins with Madhukar Bapurao Zende going on about his usual family duties of buying milk early in the morning. However, the radio announcer reveals that one of the most notorious criminals of the country, aka Carl Bhojraj, aka the Swimsuit killer, has escaped from Tihar jail with four other criminals. With Zende being the one who caught Carl in 1971, fifteen years before the story is set in 1986, he rushes to the police station, waiting for the call to brief him on the mission to catch Carl once again.