The Bengal Files

Filmmaker Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri’s The Bengal Files tells a gory chapter from the pages of history. An incident that had ravaged Bengal due to communal violence and left thousands dead. However, the Calcutta riots of 1946 are not as widely known as the partition and gory violence that took place weeks before India’s independence. Agnihotri, who has also written the film, connects present-day riots in Murshidabad to the Direct Action Day of 1946 in ways one possibly can’t fathom. Of course, since it’s an Agnihotri film, the plot and screenplay are divisive from the word go. CBI sends its officer, Shiva Pandit (Darshan Kumar), to Murshidabad to investigate the disappearance of a Dalit girl. The prime suspect and eyewitness is Bharti Bannerjee (Pallavi Joshi), a lady in her 90s who suffers from dementia. Suspicions are also on the local MLA Sardar Husseini (Saswata Chatterjee), who holds a lot of power among the people there.