“For the country,” says baby-faced Sunil Kumar Gupta (Zahan Kapoor) when asked in an interview why he wants to take up the job of a jailer. The patriotism soon wears off after he is pressed to divulge the actual reason. “To support the family,” he says. What most jobs are actually about. On his orientation day, an inmate gashes another’s cheek in front of him. It’s going to be a demanding role. Sweat and blood.
Teaching him the ropes is his superior, DSP Rajesh Tomar (Rahul Bhat), a status-quo man in a system reeking with corruption. Sunil has two colleagues, a pacifying Sikh, Shivraj Singh Mangat (Paramvir Singh Cheema) and a sadistic Haryanvi, Vipin Dahiya (Anurag Thakur). In each episode, this quartet tackles different difficulties that creep up while handling India’s biggest prison. The problems can range from shortage of blankets to a death row inmate not exactly dying when the lever is pulled.
The series opens with a lot of true-crime jazz. Charles Sobhraj is introduced as Tihar’s rockstar, slithering around the corridors, pulling strings in the upper echelons. Like Hannibal Lecter, he gives cryptic advice to Sunil, whose quixotic approach often lands him in peril. The makers use Sobhraj dexterously, putting him on screen to amp up the narrative when they feel the story is stagnating. The show shines when it weaves in drama with historical details. An episode on the dreaded rapists-killers Ranga and Billa–whose acts against two kids shocked the nation in the 80s–is dealt with nuance and leaves you less angry and more questioning. Sikh staff in the prison is treated differently after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. A segment on Kashmiri separatist leader Maqbool Bhat, however, is handled gingerly, bereft of any political undertones.
Writers Motwane, Singh and Arkesh Ajay give backgrounds to each of the main characters but sometimes it’s not ample enough to feel and root for them. Sunil’s mother isn’t proud of her son’s profession, Mangat’s brother back home in Punjab has fallen into militancy and Dahiya is sleeping and also might be in love with a superior’s wife. Tomar is trying to present himself as a responsible father in front of his estranged wife. The narrative often runs ahead of its characters. The performances, however, can be relied on. Zahaan Kapoor is softly defiant as Sunil. He delivers on the promise built up after his debut in Hansal Mehta’s 2022 political-thriller Faraz. Rahul Bhat deftly plays Rajesh Tomar as a failed family man who is a slave to a ruthless system. Anurag Thakur enjoys himself in the role of Dahiya, while Paramvir Singh Cheema makes the best out of the character he is given. The real fun, however, was had by Sidhant Gupta, who plays Sobhraj with an alluring ease and without the baggage that comes with playing a real-life person, especially the one who has become sort of a pop culture figure.
Black Warrant is intriguing and gripping. It made me want to read up on the titbits of history peppered throughout its episodes. It delved deep into the pathos of jail life. But often staring at the smaller pieces it lost touch with the bigger picture. The goalposts kept shifting. Is it a coming-of-age story of Sunil? A peep into the gritty, relentless world of prison? A critique of systemic corruption or a true-crime bonanza? It’s a bit of everything not adding up to a sum of one. It felt more a story of a world than of the people that populate it. A tale of a time if not of a moment.
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