Writer-director Sandhya Suri has made a tense, violent and politically savvy crime procedural set in India: a film about sexism, caste bigotry and Islamophobia that doubles as a study in the complex relationship between two female cops, a cynical veteran and a wide-eyed rookie. They are terrifically played by Sunita Rajwar and Shahana Goswami in what is almost a gender-switched Indian version of Training Day.
Suri is a film-maker who 20 years ago gave us a tremendous personal essay movie I for India, and this is her fiction-feature debut, which reportedly started as a documentary project inspired by public demonstrations about the gang-rape and murder of Jyoti Singh. It centres on the Indian convention of “compassionate appointment”: the dependent widow of a public official can apply for the same job. Goswami plays Santosh, whose cop husband was killed in a riot; there are dark mutterings about the unknown culprit’s Muslim identity. With no children and no money, she successfully applies for her late husband’s position and finds herself in the thick of a controversial case: the body of a young Dalit girl, raped and murdered, has been found in a village well – and the community is in uproar about the police’s obvious caste prejudice in failing to do anything.
