New Delhi:
Director Ashish Bende, whose debut feature Aatmapamphlet made the Berlinale cut in 2023, and blockbuster filmmaker Ashutosh Gowariker, who made an acting comeback in the web series Kaala Paani last year, make an unlikely but largely effective team in the true crime drama series Manvat Murders. Bende and Gowariker employ modulated methods both behind the camera and in front of it to deliver a slow-burn thriller centred on a series of murders that sent shockwaves through a tiny village in Maharashtra in 1972-1973.
The SonyLIV series throws light on the heinous crimes as well as the jagged police operation to nab the perpetrators. Relying principally on recorded facts, Manvat Murders weaves fictional elements into the tale to amp up the drama. The interflow between the two is seamless enough.
Created and written by Girish Joshi, the eight-episode Marathi series is based on police officer Ramakant S. Kulkarni’s memoir, Footprints on the Sands of Crime. It transports the audience to a famine-stricken village grappling with poverty, superstition, illiteracy and violence.
Over a period of a year and a half, four prepubescent girls and three women are found dead in the village. The serial killings and the police action are the most vital components of the story but nearly as important to the series are the socioeconomic dynamic at play in Manvat.
As danger lurks and the killers remain at large, Bombay crime branch sleuth Ramakant Kulkarni (Gowariker), with a clear brief from Maharashtra’s minister of home affairs, arrives in Manvat to take charge of the floundering probe.
The officer’s reputation as a crack detective precedes him but his past record flies out the window once he wades into the grime that pervades the village. He is averse to using force as he searches for “the truth behind the truth”.
The truth is out there for all to see. It is what lies beneath the surface that Manvat Murders is specifically interested in. So, it isn’t a visceral series of the sort that is packed with action and scintillating good-versus-evil face-offs. It unravels the knots at a deliberate pace.
Manvat Murders opens with the grisly killing of the seventh victim. The previous murders are then revealed one by one, from the first to the sixth. The victims are women and girls caught unawares while working in the fields, collecting firewood, gathering cow dung or returning home after selling haystacks. They are waylaid and butchered before they can yell for help.
When Kulkarni arrives in Manvat, he knows he has his job cut out. A deep, daunting abyss stares him in the face. The challenge before the investigating cops is to gather the evidence needed to nail the culprits. That is what Manvat Murders is primarily focussed on – the painstaking process of assembling the pieces and deciphering the clues.
Kulkarni zeroes in on a handful of suspects. He interrogates some personally and gets his colleagues to tail and grill the others. He cajoles rather than coaxes. He uses persuasion instead of pressuring the suspects into submission. He seeks to get into the head of the suspect instead of muscling his way through.
He isn’t a supercop in the Bollywood mould. Nor is Manvat Murders a conventional high-octane police drama. The subdued tone and tenor may not make for a thrilling, tense procedural but it opens up room for a deeper-than-usual inquiry into a conservative community that conceals dark secrets in its many impenetrable crannies.
The restrained reenactment of events that occurred more than 50 years ago is aided by the protagonist’s unflashy demeanour. He does nor rave, rant and deliver killer punchlines. Kulkarni approaches the tangled web behind the murders, one challenge at a time, opting for dogged diligence instead of brash bravado.
Kulkarni’s chief aide in the investigation is his Bombay Police colleague Vinayak Vakatkar (Mayur Khandge). He also has the services of a small group of local cops, among whom is Damodar Shukla (Shardul Saraf), an eager beaver who idolises Kulkarni and labours to earn the seasoned officer’s approbation.
Also in Kulkarni’s team are CID officer Ponkshe (Ketan Karande) and Inspector Paranje (Umesh Jagtap), a cop suspected of being in cahoots with the village underworld. Despite several setbacks, the lead investigator ploddingly pursues every lead to its logical end, which, more often than not, does not turn out to be what he is looking for.
On the police radar are Uttamrao Barhate (Makarand Anaspure) and his childless wife Rukminibai (Sonali Kulkarni). The unctuous couple runs an illegal liquor business. Their wealth is mostly ill-gotten.
Uttamrao and Rukmini leave their liquor-brewing operation in the care of the latter’s younger sister Samindri (Sai Tamhankar) when they are banished from the village for flouting the law once too often. But they have enough influence to be able to make their way back to their Manvat mansion sooner than later.
Manvat is a corruption-ridden village where blind faith and lawlessness form a toxic combination. The dangerous jiggery-pokery that is carried on with impunity puts the dispossessed and the powerless, who account for almost all of Manvat, at the mercy of unscrupulous couple.
Kulkarni and his team have to surmount many cold trails and dead-ends as their investigation progresses. They find themselves surrounded by talk of black magic, occult rituals, a hidden treasure, a network of hoary temples and, hold your breath, human sacrifice.
The cops run into shady psychics (Kishor Kadam plays one of them in a role that gives him limited screen time but all the opportunity to make an impact), charlatans, petty criminals (who will do anything for a bottle of hooch and 15 rupees) and hitmen.
Although Manvat Murders, notwithstanding its unsettling core, is unlikely to knock hardened viewers out of our socks, cinematographer Satyajeet Shobha Shreeram’s skilful lensing and lighting heighten the atmospherics.
Ashutosh Gowariker’s measured performance is complemented by effective turns by Sonali Kulkarni, Sai Tamhankar and Makarand Anaspure. The entire supporting and tertiary cast, down to the actors who play the most minor of parts, is in perfect sync with the world that Manvat Murders creates.
Manvat Murders, unflashy and to the point, isn’t only an account of the murders and the repercussions. The series is so much the better because it is just as much a portrait of a place, time, society and human deviance.
