Is Delhi Crime season 3 based on real stories?
When Delhi Crimes Season 1 came out in 2019, people sat glued to their screen as something shifted. A new style of glossy yet gritty, highly polished and highly researched police procedural entered the zeitgeist. Creator Richie Mehta won awards in India, abroad, everywhere. Six years later, the show's third season is its weakest one yet.
Now devastatingly, seemingly executed more as second screen viewing experience, a mere shadow of the unflinching idea it once was.
Let me explain why. Hey y'all, my name is Shivaay. Welcome back where today we are talking about Delhi Crime Season 3 now streaming on Netflix. This season, the crime largely moves out of Delhi.
It's headquartered in Rohtak, Haryana. Huma Qureshi is Meena aka Badi Didi, who runs a human trafficking business specialising in young underage girls. Under the guise of social work, Bari Didi and her subordinate Kalyani, played by a masterful Meetavashisht, she's so good, they sort of kidnap girls from vulnerable families from all over the country and then supply them to whoever pays the highest price for whatever reason they want these girls for.
Meena clearly has seen tough days herself. Right underneath the garish, bright, cheap lipstick she wears, a scar is visible on her upper lip. She uses makeup like a shield, teaching the kidnapped girls how to deploy superficial beauty to entranced men. Her own eyelashes are covered in multiple layers of mascara. They're long and pointy, like poisonous tentacles. The effect is visually very, very chilling.
On the other side is the Delhi police team that regular viewers of the show will be familiar with. In an exposition-laden voiceover, DCP Vartika Chaturvedi, played by Shefali Shah once again, explains how she left her family behind for a posting in Assam. Now here, she discovers another side of this smuggling operation.
Again, the crime is not really happening in Delhi. The idea forming here is that Vartika will now have to fight against the system that's going to try to keep her away from the political center of the country's capital. The design is to get the viewer to believe that this season might unfold on top of a race against time and bureaucracy and bureaucratic apathy. However, that is not to be.
Like I mentioned above, season 3 feels more like a background TV show, despite once again attempting to center rampant crime against women. You season 1 ka title, Delhi, that word, it meant so many things. It wasn't just that the crime was taking place in Delhi.
Rather, it was a very unforgiving look at how Delhi enabled that crime, the circumstances and the people that led to a sexual assault so heinous and unimaginable, news media around the world was talking about it. The city was the crime scene because it was the enabler. Further layers explored why it happened. It was an all-around empathetic and brilliant way to humanize the city and the monsters it nurtures. An evil almost too big for the system to comprehend, let alone defeat.
That will be seen later. What's going on? This season, the setting keeps changing. From Rohtak, Assam, Muzaffarpur, Surat, Mumbai, and even a detour to Thailand featuring Kelly Dorje. Good to see him again. Every time the setting changes, helpful text almost fills the entire screen telling you where you are again and again.
It's almost like the show is aware that you're probably not paying attention to the screen, so let's just keep reminding you what's going on. Zono, zono, zono. In effect, it begins to feel like a big-budget version of Savdhaan India. The closest it comes to examining deeper collusions in the psyche of its rightiest police heroes is in one scene where Rajesh Tailang picks up Shefali Shah in an ambassador car.
She is surprised to see, harin yeh gadi abhi bhi jalti hai. To which he says, thodi bhat dekh rek karne padti hai, phir chal jati hai. The police system, like the car itself, is a little broken, but it is functional. And it is most certainly outdated. Needs an update. Hum sab saath mein milke, in dono cases ko crack karein. And it is most certainly outdated. Needs an update.
Had the show leaned into these deeper implications a little bit, we could have had something more profound. That's not to say that Delhi Crime Season 3 is not watchable. It is. Episode 1 is straight up riveting. The trafficking case, it unfolds very briskly. All the actors are really incredible. Soon enough, things sort of turn lekin very checklisty. CCTV footage ajati hai just when it is needed, each clue leads very neatly to another clue, things progress without much friction, much struggle or even much chaos honestly.
It doesn't help that Huma Qureshi's Meena, the big baddie here, the bad person, only gets a bare bones backstory and her lackey Kusum played by Shaioni Gupta is not even afforded that. There are hints that Meena's right hand man and maybe occasional lover is probablya military trained and he's probably an ex-policeman himself, you know, he refuses to shoot another man who's wearing a cop uniform in a scene.
So what could have led this guy down this dreadful path? What happened for this person to mistrust the law and append it so mercilessly to go over to the dark side? And why is he so loyal to this woman who treats everybody very badly? This thread is not pulled. You never find out. The same is true for another new cop, Simran Massey, a fab addition that could have brought a youthful presence to the slow system.
You're shaking it up from the inside. Let me show you how it's done. But director Tanu Chopra doesn't allow this character's journey to feel very meaningful either. Rasika Tuggar, who's amazing, she's a powerhouse of a performer, so moving, so diligent. She's relegated to a few clues and plot points and one emotional scene with her ex-husband without much of a closer look at her journey in this setup.
Around three episodes in, you realize that telepolice in this show is a very competent, it's a very sanitized world of crime. The frames are lit very dramatically, shot cinematically, but the close-ups, they're not taking you inside the heads of these people, the upholders of the law.
There's no corruption, no sexism, no casteism, barely any incompetence even on display i hesitate to use the term copaganda flippantly but it might be fitting listen realism does not require brutality or violence but just because police violence is not glorified on your screen it doesn't mean that it's not happening it's not occurring and that this police institution operates just wonderfully extra judicial utopia ki bhi ki jo mundanity hai, realism usme hoga na. Tension in a dramatic TV show can only be created if there is doubt.