As a barely disguised dramatisation of a gory crime, Sector 36 doesn’t disappoint. Brutalised bodies, scattered guts, trails of bloods – Aditya Nimbalkar’s movie based on the Nithari serial murders of 2006 is designed to shock.
The Hindi-language Sector 36 arrives on Netflix after the acquittal of Moninder Singh Pandher and Surinder Koli in the killing of mostly children in the Noida exurb in 2006. In 2023, the Allahabad High Court ruled that Pandher and his domestic worker Koli had been sentenced to death because of a botched investigation and circumstantial evidence.
Sector 36 wants to address this anticlimactic end to a sensational case that involved unproven allegations of cannibalism, child pornography and organ trade. Bodhayan Roychoudhary’s screenplay has no doubt whatsoever about who is responsible for eviscerating young children and why they get away.
“No matter how hard a cockroach tries, the shoe always wins,” a line of dialogue declares.
Sector 36 opens on a creepy tone that is sustained over the 124-minute runtime. Prem (Vikrant Massey) is lounging on his master’s sofa in his master’s dressing gown, watching his favourite game show. Prem soon gets busy doing the work that gives him lip-smacking pleasure.
Although children are disappearing all over the neighbourhood, the police don’t give a toss. Sub-inspector Ram Charan (Deepak Dobriyal) is so callous he makes a distraught father put up a poster of his missing daughter at the police station. Soon after, a suitably chastened Ram Charan starts investigating the vanishings, but is stymied by Prem’s employer Balbir (Akash Khurana).
Balbir has friends in high places to cover up his low actions. Like master, like servant – Sector 36 suggests a deeply twisted mimesis that gives Prem the daring to reach for the impunity enjoyed by the wealthy Balbir.
Sordid matter is slickly packaged through top-notch cinematography (by Saurabh Goswami) and editing (by Sreekar Prasad). The deftly staged parade of disturbing visuals makes for a nerve-shredding experience, boosted by the suggestion that what we are watching is the truth about Nithari, whatever the legal outcome.
The screenplay draws its impact almost entirely from its gruesome source material, so much so that its original contributions fall flat. As a police procedural, the movie barely makes the grade.
Ram Charan’s about-turn from disinterest to obsessiveness, apart from being unconvincing, serves as a placeholder for the movie’s centrepiece. Deepak Dobriyal does a fine job of playing an underwritten character, just as Akash Khurana is suitably noxious as Balbir. The most haunting visage in the movie belongs not to the wrongfully slaughtered or their grieving families – who are cursorily dealt with – but the butcher.
Vikrant Massey has already set up Prem as a cocky man with a winning smile. When this Indian Ted Bundy begins to unspool before Ram Charan and his boss Saikia (Baharul Islam), they can only gape.
Admiration for Massey’s brilliance in the extended scene meshes with the shock of the fictional characters. Just as Ram Charan and Saikia gawk at Prem’s soliloquy, so too Deepak Dobriyal and Baharul Islam marvel at Massey’s ability to rattle off a litany of monstrosities with elan.
The sequence is so uncomfortably mesmerising that it appears to be the reason that Sector 36 exists. The rest of Sector 36 struggles to match this show of acting prowess. In making Prem the narrative’s heartless core, the movie fully reveals its intentions.
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