The monstrosity of the Nithari serial murders of “Noida”, committed by Surinder Koli and his rich employer Moninder Singh Pandher in the so-called Sector 31 back in 2006 shook India to the core. More shocking was Koli’s cold-blooded confession about rape, mutilation, and cannibalism involving 19 victims out of which a majority were children. Both men spent years on death row after their conviction in 2009, to be surprisingly acquitted last year due to “lack of evidence”.
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In his Netflix drama “Sector 36“. Aditya Nimbalkar hasn’t only changed the numerical symbol of the sector in which horrendous crimes took place, but he also turns an already gory and dark story into an even more chilling experience by exposing the blatant indifference of the officials to the disappearance of girls from the lowest cast. As it turns out, the plot of “Sector 36” works best only in those few moments when it gets very close to reality. The crucial details surrounding the mindset of a serial killer, his relationship with his employer, and how he managed to stalk his victims so easily are aspects that neither the scriptwriter nor the director know how to handle.
Additionally, Nimbalkar turns every single protagonist of the movie into an anti-hero, and this also regards the leading inspector Ram Charan Pandey (played by Deepak Dobriyal) who can not be called a good guy. On the contrary, when we get introduced to him, he shames the father of a disappeared young woman by calling him names and presuming his daughter (Tanushree Das) – coming from a poor house, probably took off to escape the drab. He is not only blatantly ignoring the circumstances under which she disappeared, but also a large number of other reported cases from the slum.
The director’s negligent approach to the topic sabotages his attempt to steer the story in another direction by introducing the attempted kidnapping of the inspector’s daughter Vedu (Ihana Kaur) which changes his point of view. Does he become likable just like that? Barely at all. It is difficult to side with a man who had previously thrown misogynistic insults in the face of a desperate parent, talking to him like he were an insignificant insect. But his initial cold ignorance makes it easier to understand the officials’ indifference toward the lowest ranks of society, the poor, the fragile, voiceless people struggling to get their basic rights protected. This simplification is in service of a larger picture deliberately applied by Bodhayan Roychaudhury who is quite new in the industry as a scriptwriter. As much as simplification proves advantageous for an overall understanding of the milieu the plot is set in, it is to no advantage in the character building.
In “Sector 36”, the perpetrators are renamed Prem (=Surinder Koli, played by Vikrant Massey) and Balbir Singh Bassi (=Moninder Singh Pandher, played by Akash Khurana) for the sake of creative license. In the movie which is based on Koli’s crimes, his character is strangely bleak and cartoonish, and his role is somehow pushed in the background to make space for the inspector and his hunt for the murderers. Balbir Singh Bassi remains a complete mystery with his vegetative presence in the movie.
The question is: why make a film about a serial killer without any wish to do it properly? Why turn it into something exaggerated in tone, long, and uneventful without taking the crimes more seriously? No good acting can turn an undercooked story into something great to watch, and this is the case with “Sector 36”.
