Black Warrant review: Insider account of Tihar Jail is gritty, as real as possible

It’s hard to pull off a prison drama where you can feel the grit without being utterly revolted at the kinds of things that go on behind those impenetrable walls; where the performances feel as close to real as possible. ‘Black Warrant’ goes the full yard in attempting to unpack the intricate power structure, showcasing caste-and-religious hierarchies between gangs comprising hardened criminals and innocents dumped there by sloppy or malicious police work, a power-keg which needs to be controlled day and night by hard-pressed wardens, peppered by the social-political happenings in the outside world, and keeps it watchable.

For the most part, prisons are dark, dank, dismal places; those incarcerated ‘doing time’ finding their own ways of whiling it away, in ways which would seem inhuman to the outside world: how many of us know that a concoction of red chilli powder and ‘gur’ can cause unimaginable damage in the wrong place? Despite a few flourishes which feel exaggerated (I haven’t read the book, so I don’t know how faithful the adaptation is), and the fact that no one smokes in the series (this was the 80s, and everyone smoked) ‘Black Warrant’ comes off as a well-made, engaging prison drama featuring real-life cases: the episode featuring Billa-Ranga, the two men who raped and killed two Delhi teenagers, is enough to give us nightmares.

Motwane, who’s Netflix docu-drama ‘Indi(r)a’s Emergency’ hasn’t yet been released, has had experience with the genre. While we do see elements from the movies — a few slo-mo struts, some background music, and a song — clearly to prevent everything from becoming too dispirited and heavy, there’s a concerted effort to maintain the tone and tenor of a multi-episode show, with the main characters appearing all through, and new characters being introduced in each episode.

One of the first colourful inmates we see keeps popping up in key moments: the notorious ‘Bikini Killer’ Charles Sobhraj (Sidhant Gupta, vamping it up happily) not only has the run of the prison, he also has the power to do the impossible — from getting Sunil in, to getting himself out.

ALSO READ | CTRL movie review: Ananya Panday, Vikramaditya Motwane film is two-dimensional

Along with Sunil are two other new entrants, the abrasive Vipin Dahiya (Anurag Thakur), and the brawny Shivraj Singh Mangat (Paramvir Singh Cheema) whose sheer physicality seems much more apt to their workplace than the almost-frail Sunil, as well as their willingness to wade into a gaggle of unruly ‘qaidis’ and break up fights. Both are excellent.

Their senior, DSP Rajesh Tomar, is played by Rahul Bhat, who has finally got a worthy role all the way after Anurag Kashyap’s 2013 ‘Ugly’: even though Tomar is shown marching up and down — in that specific way that desi series use to show purposiveness — a tad too often, he also gets a tangled domestic angle — an estranged wife — which shows us how difficult it is for men like him to have a ‘normal’ home life. Tota Roy Chowdhury and Joy Sengupta, as senior prison functionaries steeped in its ways, add heft.

Women do show up in the series. Dahiya’s stated virility is used in a clandestine affair, and a wedding which results in baby; Sunil has a girl he’s sweet on, and a needy ‘auntyji’ as a neighbour who wants ‘jail-ka-khana’ to put off bad ‘karma; a reporter (Rajshri Deshpande) turns up to speak to a high-profile prisoner. But they are secondary in this all-male affair.

Along the way, we learn prison terminology: the three tenets (‘teen stambh’) of a prison are ‘Dekhbhal, Nigrani, Niyantran’; Class B and C prisoners have different privileges and are treated very differently (there’s no class A, unless you are Sobhraj, in which case you get anything you want, including young women); ‘chamgadad banna’ is the phrase used to hang inmates upside down before raining blows. Black warrants are are written for those who are going to the gallows — the nib of the pen broken like we have seen so many times in the movies — and we see multiple hangings (the real-life Sunil presided over several, that’s why the title), one of which ends in a body refusing to stop breathing. Macabre, yes. Bizarre, yes. Unbelievable, absolutely. Just another day in a high-security prison, where prisoners on death row counted down to their last moment.

As a young reporter, I was part of a group which had visited Tihar back in the day when talk of reform was in the air: I remember nothing of that afternoon except the mingling, overpowering smell of excrement and fried food. While some of the violence remains shadowy, Motwane and his team don’t shy away from showing us, literally, shit: prisons aren’t pretty, and the filth there doesn’t just come from those who are locked away and the keys thrown away, it also comes from those whose souls grow hard and corrupt while presiding over the unfortunates made invisible to those of us who live and breathe free air. The Jailor Saab of this story, Sunil Kumar Gupta, is shown to be an exception, and that’s why he’s a true hero.

Black Warrant cast: Zahan Kapoor, Rahul Bhat, Paramvir Singh Cheema, Anurag Thakur, Sidhant Gupta, Joy Sengupta, Tota Roy Choudhury, Saamya Jainn, Pratap Phad, Vinay Sharma, Sukhwinder Chahal, Rajshri Deshpande
Black Warrant director: Vikramaditya Motwane
Black Warrant rating: 3.5 stars