The latest season of the Emmy Award-winning television series “Delhi Crime” is finally broadcast on Netflix after a three-year-long wait, and the wait is undoubtedly worthwhile. The best thing about this season is that it does not give any “missing-out” vibes to our audience, who even did not go through its prior chapters. In this season, which was created by Richie Mehta and directed by Tanuj Chopra, Delhi Police solve brand new, heinous serial homicide cases. Based on “Moon Gazer,” a chapter from former policeman Neeraj Kumar’s book “Khaki Files: Inside Stories of Police Missions,” Delhi Police not only strives to solve a brutal crime that poses a grave threat to Delhites but also jostles with moral logjams and social stereotypes while ultimately siding with the right decision. So yes, “Delhi Crime Season 2” is undoubtedly much more than your everyday police drama. How much? Let’s explore.
Spoilers Ahead
What Apocalypse Struck The Capital?
The buzzing city, yet ready to welcome the wintry chill in the middle of November ’13, is shocked by a fatal incident of a brutal quadruple murder in the elite neighborhood of the Greater Kailash area in South Delhi. The unfortunate victims are the Arora couples, two retired doctors, and their close friends, the Menons, who came for a visit. DCP Vartika Chaturvedi (Shefali Shah) rushes to the scene of the crime and finds a horrible, stomach-churning scene that could wake anyone up from a good night’s sleep. The pandemonium is soon identified as the modus operandi of the infamous “Kachcha Baniyan” criminal syndicate, which created much terror during the 90s and was last active in 2003. Their signature style consists of breaking into the house, targeting elderly wealthy couples, killing them mercilessly with weapons like hammers, axes, knives, etc., eating at the crime scene after committing the crime, and making the scene more nasty and horrendous—all of which are very prominent in this homicide. It is obtained from the CCTV footage that the killers came in their undergarments, with their bodies coated with oil to reduce resistance, and accomplished a significant robbery. In the blink of an eye, the police department votes their opinions toward that notorious gang, with which the lower class “Denotified Tribe” people collaborate and begin the search for them.
Are the “Denotified Tribes” Really “Born Criminals”?
Needless to say, the terror that the gang has spread over the years is enough to cause public panic, even in the absence of a valid reason. So the department tightens its lips in every way possible. But, like a rose without thorns, word gets back to the department, and the entire city is out on the streets once more. In the meantime, more murders of a similar nature occur. The system is again under immense pressure, and the Joint CP (Adil Hussain) advises involving the retired SHO of Patel Nagar, Viren Chadda, who is nothing but a racist, overconfident, and greedy one. He pinpoints the tribal people as the born criminals, captures nearly half of the inhabitants, including females and children, from their slums in East Delhi, and transforms the police station into a fish market. Two people from that crowd, Jugnu and Azaad, are suspected as the killers as they were seen in the location two days prior to the first murder. They escape in order to avoid arrest because they fear ill-treatment despite being guiltless. Later, they come to surrender, and their alibis are verified. But already, the media and the public are aware of the Delhi Police’s brilliant job of capturing two probable suspects, and the nation wants them to be publicized. DCP gets direct orders to present those innocent tribes as murderers despite the fact that they are innocent, as they need to calm the situation by showing some “faces.” to the higher authorities as well as the public. After conversing with their lawyer Vineet Singh and her senior, Vartika realizes that these backward people, lacking their basic needs, are easy prey. Maybe the system will never have a second thought about sending these people to the gallows without a fair trial because they are marked as “Born Criminals.” Some of them may have had criminal records in the past or even now, but not all, and generalizing has never helped to keep a criminal from committing a crime. No one cares if they are really a culprit or just being already judged by their ruined reputation. So, between the truth and the easy, she chooses the truth, dismisses the bigot Chadda, and tells the media that “Denotified Tribes” are not involved in this crime. Hence, the new hypothesis concludes that another group is behind all these murders and copycatting in the “Kachcha Baniyan” style. Just like an unlucky move in the game of snake-and-ladder, the Delhi Police again starts from the beginning. What’s next?
Who Is Karishma Solanki? How Is She Caught?
Meanwhile, there are already seven murders taking place in posh South Delhi, and the department has no clue about the culprit. DCP asks everybody to crosscheck everything if they are missing something. She emphasizes a common link between all the victims, and ACP Neeti Singh (Rasika Dugal) finds a beauty parlor where the female victims are attended to. Eventually, police came to know that the missing pendant of Mrs. Romila Arora was being sold in a shop by an old lady. The police track her down and capture Saraswati, an abusive old lady with a heap of stolen expensive ornaments, which were given by her grandson Guddu aka Pawan Gulati to sell. Eventually, police track Guddu. He shoots at Bhupendra when police get him in custody but finally tells the truth.
The story turns its pages to a foursome who is behind all these gruesome murders. The mastermind of this gang is Lata Solanki (Tilottama Shome), who hides under the name Karishma, a cracked-head woman with past criminal records. In this horrific manner, she satisfies her killing spree with her lover Babloo, his nephew Thermal, and Guddu. This maniac lady is doing all this to collect money to open her own beauty parlor. She got the whereabouts of her victims from the beauty parlor where she worked, the only common connection that Neeti discovered. Suddenly, after a failed attempt of another loot and murder, she gets involved in a grapple with her two companions and ends up killing them and running away. After a not-so-long game of hide-and-seek, DCP and her team are finally able to grab her, but Vartika fails to see any answer justifying her crime. In the last episode, we see that DCP Vartika has been promoted to the rank of DIG, but her bravery costs her a transfer order.
Which Is Better: The Easy Way Out Or The Truth? What Will Vartika Choose?
At the very start of the series, we hear DCP Vartika telling us the limitations of policing the whole capital, with a tremendous diversity of wealth and poverty going hand in hand. The “Denotified Tribes” are a huge number of Delhi slumdogs who were deprived of their basic commodities during the British Era for their tribal identity. In order to survive in this rotten society, they had to snatch what they lacked. So theft and burglary were their only means of living. The “Kachcha Baniyan” gang was also active in the past when ruthless people killed the elderly in order to loot their wealth. But right now the whole community is marked as heinous criminals by a few of them. In “Delhi Crime Season 2,” DCP Vartika and her efficient officers aim to not only secure the lives of people but protect the innocent from being thrashed. The journey is not that easy. We notice their sensitive personal agonies come in between their duties, but they manage it carefully. In this season, we see Chandni (Yashaswini Dayama), Vartika’s daughter, is in Toronto and she doesn’t like her mother to control her actions even from miles away. However, she is a young blood who just wants to explore her new life, and like every teenager, she skips her classes so much that Vartika receives a warning letter about her academic probation. She is devastated to see her daughter’s defiant attitude as she tries to confront her. However, what stands out most is how much Chandni loves and relies on her mother, knowing that she will always pick the correct path.
In this season, we see Neeti married to Devinder (Aakash Dahiya), an army personnel who loves her wife but, as a product of patriarchal culture, can be harsh on her at times. He becomes angry when Neeti asks him if he has told anybody about the confidential information in her case. This is probably because Neeti is unsure about every move of her husband, as their marriage was arranged by their parents. When Devinder’s much-awaited trip plan is canceled because of the escape of the two accused from Neeti’s custody, he wishes for her wife to be suspended—that breaks her heart. Besides that, he underestimates the police system, thinking their troubles are not as serious as the ones he faces in his army life. Finally, the calm officer gets furious and raises her voice for the first time; that depicts the growth of this character in a very realistic way. Not only that, we notice the characters like Bhupindra (Rajesh Tailang), who is free from every stereotype but still chasing after her daughter Rebha to tighten her knots. We witness him building her matrimonial profile without her knowledge, but he later realizes in the hospital that, like her, time is something we all need.
Viren Chadda: The Evil Side of the Police
Unlike the previous season, the series is not only focused on the brighter side of the police. We are surprised to see the character, Viren Chadda, who lives in his bungalow, giving illogical excuses for being in an economic crisis. He even insists on DCP to clear his pension and behaves inhumanly with the tribes. The sarcasm is much liked when the racist retired officer gives the order to capture all the poor, even the females because he does not discriminate. Though he had enough “experience” handling the DNT cases, he was finally kicked out for taking a bribe from them to clear their names. Vartika also sometimes loses her patience while dealing with such chaos but immediately checks on her. That clearly shows that the err is to humans, not to a particular community. We even see Jairaj (Anurag Arora) become more efficient in tackling people. In the prior season, we observed him to lose his calm in the Bihar police station when he was forced to eat chicken, but here we see the same Jairaj saving ACP Neeti from the abusive old woman Saraswati, and succeeding in capturing her. Needless to say, the filmmaker portrays all the characters very well-grounded, and a visible growth is seen as if they are not just characters but real officers who are getting more and more expert.
The Ending Of ‘Delhi Crime’ Season 2: Explained: How Does Lata End Up Being A Serial Killer?
We find the anti hero character Karishma, aka Lata Solanki, a cold-blooded lunatic who does not have any remorse or reason for her crimes. She carries a juvenile criminal record and is identified from Guddu’s confessions. The police rush to her homeland, Ghaziabad, but hear that she left her husband and child and ran away. It is unclear how she collaborates with Babloo, his nephew Themal, and Guddu, Saraswati’s grandson, but it is their gang on the road that mimics the style of “Kachcha Baniyan” gangs. She probably motivated the rest of them to commit these heinous crimes for her own needs. We see that they are always scared of her maniacal attitude. She was doing all she could to own her beauty parlor as she was tired of working as an employee. We remember a hint that the culprit could be a woman when Sudhir (Gopal Dutt) is concerned about the theft of face cream, and we later see Lata applying this cream. Eventually, Lata takes all the money and completes the down payment for her parlor. Even after a failed attempt, she is not afraid and wants to kill more, and also spends all the money for her own needs. Lata has zero empathy towards anyone that she does not bother to kill Babloo and Thermal when they ask her to return money. She again runs away and finds a room with the help of a restaurant owner, who is tracked and interrogated by Delhi Police, and she is finally under arrest. When someone calls this psychotic woman mad, we see her vulnerability. Because Karishma is the name of her former boss, Lata chose that name as her alias in order to demonstrate how intensely she wanted to be in charge. Hence, the filmmaker has brilliantly described what she could do to achieve her lust. She defends her conduct by claiming that her victims deserved the worst possible outcome because her clients broke their promise of giving her money for her beauty parlor. This is the reason she just killed them without a pity. Her aspirations and the way she wants to achieve them literally horrify Vartika. The fatal episodes of the trauma which she probably went through in her early life, possibly led her to this path. It is never known exactly why she ends up being this wild and she seems totally unaware of what she has done. Her stagnant and scary eyes have everything but a fitting response to her heinous crime.
Final Words : Much more Than Just A Standard Police Procedural
In a nutshell, “Delhi Crime Season 2” is the pictorial representation of a police case victory but a national defeat in a caste, creed, class and gender stigmatized country like India. There are a lot of improvised scenes happening in this new season; among them the very first thing we love is the introduction of much-needed cyber-security and digital forensic officer Ashutosh into the police system. In the previous season, we were already aware of the fate of the case, but this season we expected a layered and hair-raising sensation, and thankfully it was well served. Unlike in the first season, the graphic bludgeoning scenes accompanied by eerie sound effects may be impalpable. The top-notch performances, screenplay, and cinematography make the series binge-worthy with breathtaking thrills. The valuable presence of three of the finest female actors in the country is an asset that we did not expect before. However, “Delhi Crime Season 2” is an eye-opener that something is amiss with the administration of justice. It makes us wonder if impartial justice in our culture is still a privilege or if it is even meant to be available to all. Our hearts slump when we realize that someone is getting a different degree of attendance just because they were born into a particular group. Therefore, far from being a typical police drama and a compact spine-chilling thriller, the series not only successfully escapes the second season’s curse but also emphasizes the people’s varying degrees of psychological and emotional distress, pulls on their rage and drives to generate moral subtlety.
“Delhi Crime Season 2” is an Indian Crime Series streaming on Netflix with subtitles.
