Zee5’s Silence… Can You Hear It? is an investigative drama film about the death of a young girl who was the daughter of a retired justice. Crime thrillers are a rage in the OTT space, and there are multiple films and television shows in the genre that are either brilliant or plain bad. There was no reason stated or understood as to why the movie was titled Silence… Can You Hear It? because it doesn’t seem to bear any relevance with the actual content of the movie.
Silence 1 begins with a few young college students trekking at a spot far away from Mumbai. The boys accidentally find the dead body of Pooja Chaudhary. It was obvious she was murdered, and her body was dumped this far away in the hope it would not be discovered by anyone. Pooja Chaudhary was the daughter of a retired justice who was good friends with Kavita Khanna. Her murder was shocking, and her father, Justice Chaudhary, wanted closure. This two-hour and thirty-minute-long film was a straightforward investigative drama with zero distractions. Here, the story uncovers the power Pooja’s father had to get a police officer who works in narcotics to get the crime investigation started. It subtly talks about the influence the rich and powerful have to bypass structural weaknesses in the system to get their way. Case in point: the retired Justice Chaudhary could pull out an officer working on an active case to solve the murder of his daughter Pooja. The said officer was ACP Avinash Verma, who was given the power to choose his team to begin an investigation.
ACP Avinash Verma, IPS, is a divorcee and has a daughter who makes him wear quirky t-shirts that he has to wear while on the job. Silence… Can You Hear It? could be an ode to father-daughter relationships. Avinash could notice how desperate Justice Chaudhary was to track down the killer to attain some closure. Avinash, on the other hand, was close to his daughter and was willing to accept her demands to keep her happy.
MLA Ravi Khanna was married to Kavita, who had been in a coma since the day Pooja disappeared. Initially, no one felt there could be a connection between Ravi Khanna’s home and Pooja’s murder. Pooja was last seen by Ravi and his cook, Dadu. Her family, and Ravi was made aware of the disappearance when he got back from the hospital. Ravi’s wife, Kavita, slipped into a coma after having fallen down the stairs. It was the investigation by Avinash and his team that helped them establish that Pooja’s murder had taken place in the same apartment. Rishabh, Pooja’s close friend, was also questioned as a part of the routine investigation. Rishabh’s fiancée, Kia, was also back in town from Toronto, only to see her boyfriend grieving for the death of a close friend.
The movie was simple and easy to follow, unlike many convoluted crime thrillers that are filled with unnecessary flashbacks. Silence… Can You Hear It? also showed off how the police are subjected to plenty of harmful situations that could potentially kill them, yet they are not given any gear to protect themselves from getting killed in the line of work. The team headed by ACP Avinash Verma was made up of a bunch of good police officers who went out of their way to seek answers regarding the murder. The usual suspects in the film were predictable, and the police many times came close to finding out the truth when they were diverted by an inconsequential lead. An important lead, a club bouncer was eventually killed who could have pointed at the killer very early in the film.
Silence 1 spent a lot of time understanding the nuances of an investigation into a murder that was easily an open-and-shut case. It was the police who dug deep into the minute details of the statements given by the people who were in the house at the time of the murder. It was such details that helped them find the culprit. The team also had to obtain a statement from a woman who was in a coma to track the culprit down. This subplot was ridiculous, but the requirement for suspension of disbelief was at an all-time high in this particular scenario in the film. The team was again distracted from nabbing the killer.
Silence 1 ended with ACP Avinash Verma and his team finally cracking who the killer was based on the time of the day the murder happened and the visitor’s register placed at the entrance of the building. Avinash and his team found out Rishabh, the son of Justice Chaudhary’s friend and a guest at their home, had entered the building in the hope of meeting Pooja and used a fake name to do so. Since no one was in the apartment at that juncture, he’d witnessed her dead body and ran off before he was made the suspect. He exited with the same name but used his actual handwriting in a hurry.
Avinash and his team compared his handwriting with a signature on a file containing details of Pooja. Rishabh initially claimed to be just friends with Pooja, but her emails from a discreet account to Rishabh and the back-and-forth communication between them proved the two had had an affair even though the guy was engaged. There was proof of Rishabh’s relationship with Pooja and his entry into the building the young man had nothing on him to prove he wasn’t the killer.
Meanwhile, MLA Ravi Khanna was arrested for obstruction of evidence and misleading the investigation. It was revealed that Ravi Khanna had first found the dead body and wanted to inform the police about it. His assistant requested that he not ruin his image and hired a bouncer named Sunny to get rid of the body and evidence of anything that might have taken place in his bedroom. Kavita returned to find her friend’s dead body, and on her way down the stairs out of shock, she fell, which caused her comatose state.
Avinash was not sure if Rishabh was the killer because the mystery of who called from the PCO had not been cracked yet. Rishabh claimed he did not call Pooja because she wouldn’t have allowed him to meet her. Days after the arrest, Avinash was visited by Rishabh’s fiancée, Kia, who wanted to meet him in prison. Avinash soon got into her head about the entire scenario, and she blurted out about the emails that she claimed she had seen. This was the confession he was looking for. Avinash revealed it was Kia who killed Pooja with a copper nightstand lamp on learning of the affair. Avinash came to know of her involvement in the murder when he noticed parts of her bracelet he found at the crime scene, and noticed she was wearing the same piece of jewelry at that moment. Kia was eventually arrested, but she claimed the death was accidental. Kia was the one who called the PCO to find out if Pooja was at the apartment. This gave her enough time to approach her and ask her to back away from Rishabh. Kia killed Pooja in a fit of rage and ran away.
ACP Avinash Verma, in Silence 1 was able to crack the whodunnit rather quickly and nab the right person. The second film of the series is slated to be released, and it will continue with Avinash and his team investigating another crime.
