Delhi Crime Season 2
Creator: Richie Mehta
Cast: Shefali Shah, Rajesh Tailang, Rasika Dugal
Rating: 3.5/5
If you want to have a good time watching ‘Delhi Crime Season 2’, you have to first forget Season 1. Even any residual remnants of the 2012 Emmy-award winning series in the corners of the mind can dilute the significance of the latest one.
Once you do so, buckle up, as DCP Vartika Chaturvedi (Shefali Shah) and her compatriots take you on a heart-wrenching roller-coaster ride through the serpentine bylines of a concrete jungle in search of criminals, nay animals, who have left behind a slew of bodies bludgeoned to death.
The plot of the second season is not as sensational as the first, which dealt with the rape-murder of Nirbhaya, a case Vartika terms not ‘heinous but insanity’ in a particularly poignant scene.
Season 2 revolves around the ‘Kachcha Baniyan’ gang of the 90s which unleashed unimaginable terror around New Delhi by targeting and murdering, needless to say in the most barbaric manner, wealthy senior citizens in their posh homes. It was similar to the Dandupalya gang of Bangalore, the only difference being that the latter had no discrimination when it came to choosing their victims. But both the gangs were merciless and maniacal in their manner and methods.
The series, of five episodes of about 60 minutes each, recreates the pain and horror unleashed by the gang, fastidiously sticking to facts and figures and at no time glorifying the gravity of the crime or justifying the reasons behind them.
There is no preaching or issues of propriety raised either.
The series also throws light on the rights and wrongs of some of our institutions and its consequences, briefly but with equanimity - the short-comings of the police force and at the same time, their diligence and devotion to duty and its results, the political nexus and its consequences, the overindulgence of the media and its craze for BREAKING NEWS and, of course, social activism and its impact, with the focus here being Denotified Tribes.
Like in Season 1, the makers have dealt with the plot, ‘based on true events’, with remarkable detachment and narrated it as it may have happened, neither diluting any gruesome parts, except for morphing some bloody images, nor adding any special effects or graphics to ‘colour’ the crime scenes. The missing rhetoric is evident right through.
However, once it is established, midway through, that the Kachcha Baniyan gang is not behind the murders, the plot loses its edge and the pace its momentum.
But if you quit the series at this stage, you will miss quite a lot in terms of a quirky twist and at least one short but superb cameo act by Tilothama Shome as a female psychopath with a penchant for hammering her victims to death.
The little-known actress, in a role with shades of grey, perhaps equivalent to Hathoda Thyagi of ‘Paatal Lok’, is impressive and leaves you dumbfounded as she reveals her simple motto to Vartika, “Jab mangnese nahi milta, thub cheenna padega madamji, (if you don’t get what you want by requesting, then you have to snatch it).”
But Shefali Shah is again the heart and soul of the series. The seasoned actress bites into the role with great relish and delivers another cold (and hot whenever the need arises), clinical and, at times, circumspect performance. Her every gesture has a nuance of its own, be it just a wave of her hand or a mere shrug of her shoulders or when shouting ‘dismissed’ to her erring staff.
With minimum makeup and looking equally comfortable in much-worn police uniform or old casuals, Shefali uses her big oval eyes to great effect, be it for intimidating the suspects or unnerving the real criminals; or for conveying her total helplessness due to reasons beyond her control or the hopelessness of the whole system.
At the same time, the same pair of eyes melt and become melancholic when she meets the kin of the victims. In a scene, she confronts the granddaughter of the second elderly couple bludgeoned to death in their bed with a hammer. Her eyes gradually well in tears as the granddaughter narrates the sequence of the deadly events, getting hysterical and inconsolable by the second.
Shah’s silence and unblinking glare speaks for her inner pain, dilemma, and powerless situation at the mindless scenarios unfolding right in front of her eyes.
Her character is again multifaceted and multidimensional. At the police station, she has to handle multiple problems – severe shortage of staff and resources, incompetent subordinates, corrupt colleagues, intimidating superiors and in-fighting within the force apart from constant political interference and interventions by human rights activists.
At home, she has a temperamental daughter to deal with who is convinced that the national capital is not safe for women and the police force is not doing enough.
In all the chaos and madness, Shefali’s trusted lieutenants - Inspector Bhupendra Singh (Rajesh Tailang), Woman Inspector Neethi Singh (Rasika Dugal), Sub-Inspector Jairaj Singh (Anuraag Arora), Sub-Inspector Sudhir Kumar (Gopal Datt) and SHO Subhash Gupta (Sidharth Bhardwaj) - stand by her.
But they too have their own share of shortcomings and woes which are touchingly interspersed in short scenes which do not affect either the narration or the suspense.
The series is worth watching, even binge-watching if you have a particular liking for the genre and admire and appreciate technical finesse in all departments of film-making (direction, music, cinematography, screenplay, etc).