Prosit Roy’s Raakh takes a big swing in its last episode. After tip-toeing around the crime where two teens—a brother and his sister—were murdered in broad daylight in Delhi in 1978 and the man-hunt that followed, the non-linear narrative finally depicts the day of the crime. It’s a tricky sequence, illustrating the scene of crime inside the car, where the siblings are being driven by two runaway murderers. Even though there are plenty of markers even before this sequence, it was this scene that assured me about Roy’s directorial intent and creators Anusha Nandakumar and Sandeep Saket’s authorial sensitivity behind telling the story. Such a scene could easily become lurid and sensationalise the crime. Instead Raakh remaining a clear-eyed procedural even during its most heated sequence, is testament to the crew’s great care and rigour around the show’s central conflict. Despite a fair bit of violence (five murders take place in the pursuit of the murderers) – the showrunners walk the thin line of never making it seem gratuitous, and yet never softening the blow of the grotesque trail of bodies left behind.Based on the real-life murder case that took place in the same year and became notorious, Raakh uses the crime to investigate how the widely-reported incident sapped the innocence out of a society that once was, and paved the way for the rampant mistrust we find ourselves living in. Suman and Sahil Arora (Divya and Vivaan Sharma) residents of the relatively posh Delhi Cantonment area, were on their way to the Aakashvani Bhavan for Suman’s performance. Amidst lashing rains, the siblings took a lift from an approaching Fiat Padmini. Unbeknownst to the teenagers, the men in the car were two murderers: Babu (Akash Makhija) and Rajjo (Ramandeep Yadav). When Suman isn’t heard on the radio, her father, Lt. Col Ashok Arora (Aamir Bashir), goes looking for them. They are nowhere to be found and Ashok and Mona (Sonali Bendre) alert the Delhi police. Sub-Inspector Jayaprakash or JP (Ali Fazal) is tasked with finding the children. After their bodies are discovered by a goat herder, the next day, the murder investigation and the hunt for Babu and Rajjo cuts between flashbacks of circumstances that led to the two criminals entering Delhi.A still from ‘Raakh’.In an era, where most streaming platforms are brimming with cop procedurals, Nandakumar and Saket’s show is level-headed enough to let its meticulous research shine in the most inane scenes, lending a specificity to the tropes. For example, Jayaprakash is shown as a cop with a chip on his shoulder. Landing his first high-profile case, he is eager to prove his mettle. Fazal is an excellent choice to play such a cliched character, given how there’s often an air of discovery in his performances. It’s only halfway into the show that it’s revealed that the man belongs to an oppressed caste, thereby putting his initial anxiety into perspective, where he’s introduced studying for the UPSC. The detail is whispered, rather than made to look like a progressive statement. It also explains JP’s embarrassment and irritation when his father (Rakesh Bedi), a retired constable, frequently shows up at the station with a large tiffin carrier of mutton curry. Adorably nicknamed ‘Mutton waale Bauji’ by JP’s colleagues, Bedi is superb as a father whose skills inside the kitchen is the only love language he has to reach out to his distant son, and a way to impress the son’s superiors in the police department. He gets one of the best lines in the show – ‘Whether it’s a sword or a ladle, everyone has to pick a weapon of their choice’.Babu and Rajjo could very well have been one-note ‘villains’, but we feel the circumstances they hail from. It’s possible to gauge the sexual repression and stark hunger that has contributed to their life of crime. Makhija especially, delivers a bad guy performance for the ages. A rage-fuelled monster, constantly switching between being the scheming mentor for Rajjo and a ruthlessly devious businessman trying to overturn his generational poverty, and a surprisingly affable man who could easily succumb to his volatility, ensuring most audience members are on the edge of their seat whenever Babu appears. Yadav is very good as Rajjo, with a front-row seat to Babu’s monstrosities—torn between his loyalty, and trying to resolve the feud between his morals and his eagerness to prove his masculinity (it’s suggested he was sterilised during the Emergency). I also liked some of the little things, like JP’s discreet relationship with local journalist Nisar Rizvi (Anshula Chauhan), and their lovely ease. Like the first time, we see him visiting her women’s hostel, she asks him if he would like tea. When he nods, she says – ‘No sugar in mine, okay?’ and then laughs. Covering the crime for her newspaper, we see her being as unapologetically ambitious as JP, who is eager to solve the case to breach his own predetermined social stature. I’ve rarely ever not enjoyed a Dibyendu Bhattacharya performance, and here as SP Indranil Hajra, JP’s reporting officer, he is delightful as the fatherly figure in his life, who is also capable of giving him a dressing down. There are smaller characters like an androgynous music performer, Pyaare Mohan (Mukund Pal), an unexpected accomplice and then later a victim of the two runaway criminals. Kalyanee Mulay is palpably effective as Babu’s mother, who faces a tragic fate on his return from the youth correctional facility. I’ve also remembered Meena (Namita Krishnamurthy), a nurse and Babu’s lover, walking on egg shells in his orbit. A still from ‘Raakh’.Raakh strongly reminded me of Trial By Fire, given how both shows are centred around the death of two teenagers, and their grieving parents having to deal with its fallout. Compared to Abhay Deol and Rajshri Deshpande, who practically carried the Netflix show on their shoulders, here, the parents have relatively less to do, rendered powerless bystanders during the search for their children’s killers. However, it’s hard to fault Bashir’s performance, especially when he lets out helpless, agonised screams after finding out Suman was raped before being killed. Bendre feels less authentic in comparison, even though she fully commits to her part. The reason both shows look similar are the show’s director of photography, Saumyananda Sahi and colorist, Siddharth Meer. This is Sahi’s third consecutive period production in Delhi after Trial By Fire and last year’s Black Warrant. Despite not knowing anything about the show, I instantly recognised the show might be based on real-life murderers Billa and Ranga, from an early shot in the show when Suman and Sahil take a lift from strangers, after missing their last bus from school. In Black Warrant, Sahi had recreated the Billa/Ranga crime-scene, where the two murderers incarcerated in Tihar are merely a chapter in a series that spans far wider.I liked how, despite the many temptations to make a cop procedural glamorous and heroic, Raakh remained true to its intent of being mindfully sober while portraying police officials. Fazal, a good-looking hunk, could have easily made his character look more confident and relaxed. Instead, he sports a Jagdish Raj moustache, wears an oversized police hat, his trousers are an inch north of where they should be, and fumbles around with the seat-belt after boarding an airplane for the first time, during the investigation.Roy, who earlier co-directed Pataal Lok S01, is serviced well by Nandakumar and Saket’s cautious and littered-with-observations teleplay. Despite the atmosphere of fear, Raakh is tuned to our contemporary politics. We know this from a scene where JP cautions how one bad man’s belief system can get co-opted by a mob, and how they spread like termites, ensuring the rot in our social fabric. Depicting a heinous crime of two teenagers murdered in cold blood, Raakh ends with the courage of two teenagers who went down fighting, inflicting multiple wounds on their killers. Which is what led to them getting caught and justice taking its due course. And a rare instance when the law enforcement worked tirelessly to apprehend the criminals. It seems to be saying that rogue elements are not going anywhere, and the only way to stop them from devouring our country’s social fabric will require the ‘good’ elements to not lose heart and act.*All episodes of Raakh are streaming on Amazon Prime Video.