‘Daayra’ Movie Review: A Furious Vigilante Drama Posing As A Police Procedural

Meghna Gulzar’s Talvar (2015) presents three perspectives on the 2008 Noida double murder case, but it makes no secret about what it really believes, lamenting a system for not doing its job. Gulzar’s Chhapaak (2020) is based on the courageous life of acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal, but exposes a system that makes little difference even if it does its job. Both films are shaped by the frustration of operating within the porous framework of law and order, in a patriarchal nation where nothing except headlines change. Gulzar’s latest, Daayra, completes this social-postmortem trilogy. The frustration has mutated into unbridled rage.Loosely inspired by the 2019 Hyderabad gang-rape and murder — where four suspects are arrested for the chilling rape of a 26-year-old veterinary doctor, and then ‘killed’ in police custody — the theme reaches its natural conclusion.