Raakh is far more than a crime thriller. It is a story about recognition. About caste surviving inside modern institutions. About generations fighting different battles for dignity.
The contemporary OTT landscape has become fertile ground for crime thrillers. In an era shaped by shrinking attention spans and an increasing appetite for adrenaline-driven storytelling, the genre has found perhaps its most ideal home on streaming platforms. The significant rise of crime thrillers in Indian OTT over the last decade reflects precisely this cultural shift. Prosit Roy’s Raakh initially appears to comfortably inhabit this familiar territory. Set in Delhi in 1978, the series begins with the disappearance and brutal murder of two teenagers, unfolding into a relentless police investigation to track down the perpetrators.
Structurally, the series employs a semi-classical screenplay that runs on two parallel timelines – the present investigation and the criminals’ past – gradually revealing the chain of events that distort both individual lives and the larger social order. It moves deliberately as a slow-burn thriller, a pacing choice that works well with its period setting.
The series draws loosely from the infamous 1978 Ranga-Billa case, one of India’s most disturbing criminal episodes which later contributed to landmark developments in Indian legal history. While Raakh fictionalises several details, this creative liberty is used not merely for suspense but to build a wider social canvas where caste, class, gender and structural violence quietly operate beneath the crime narrative. And it is here that Raakh begins distinguishing itself from the growing crowd of Indian crime dramas.
A slow but noticeable departure from the deliberate ‘caste blindness’
Over the last few years, Hindi cinema and OTT storytelling have increasingly begun engaging more directly with caste realities. Bheed, Kathal, Dahaad – and now Raakh – seem to indicate a slow but noticeable departure from the deliberate “caste blindness” that long dominated mainstream storytelling. Raakh enters this space without loudly announcing its politics. Instead, it embeds caste within the everyday mechanics of the story.
One of the central figures through whom this emerges is sub-inspector Jayaprakash Jatav, played by Ali Fazal. Jayaprakash stands in sharp contrast to conventional portrayals of Dalit characters in Indian visual culture. He is sharp, confident, aspirational, preparing for UPSC examinations, intellectually ambitious and deeply committed to his work. Yet significantly, he remains sub-inspector – not yet a full Inspector. The qualifier itself feels symbolic. His competence is repeatedly questioned.
He is constantly forced to prove himself within a system structured to distrust him. What makes this trajectory particularly telling is the series’ conclusion. Jayaprakash is finally promoted and becomes Inspector – but only after solving the brutal murder case and demonstrating extraordinary competence. The narrative inadvertently reveals a familiar social truth: Dalits are rarely granted legitimacy as a given. Their presence within institutions remains perpetually under suspicion, their abilities continuously doubted, and their worth made conditional upon exceptional performance.
Unlike ‘upper caste’ privilege, which often functions without explanation or justification, Dalit existence within institutions is burdened with the endless task of proving merit. They remain what may be called questionable subjects – individuals whose talent, authority and rightful presence are constantly tested before society agrees to recognise them. Jayaprakash’s promotion therefore is not simply professional success. It reflects the caste burden of proving one’s worth repeatedly before acceptance arrives. The series deepens this through one of its most compelling secondary characters: Jayaprakash’s father, Ghanshyam, played beautifully by Rakesh Bedi. A recurring motif throughout Raakh is food – specifically the mutton cooked by Ghanshyam, who regularly carries it to the police station where senior officers consume it.
On the surface, these moments appear ordinary, even affectionate. Yet, beneath them lies a deeply political history. When Jayaprakash repeatedly questions why his father continues cooking food for senior officers – almost appearing to reproduce an inherited service role – Ghanshyam offers one of the series’ most revealing lines:
“Jayprakash, where I grew up, serving someone food we cooked ourselves was a big battle. Now people crave this very taste. And that, in its own way, is a victory.”
The statement transforms what initially appears like servitude into historical memory. To understand the significance of this moment, one must locate it within India’s caste history around food and labour. Dalit communities were historically denied entry into occupations involving food commerce – owning tea stalls, running restaurants, or serving cooked meals – because caste society located food at the heart of its social segregation. Governed by Brahminical notions of “purity and pollution”, the refusal to consume food prepared by Dalits became a mechanism of exclusion. More importantly, this is not merely a historical reality; even today, Dalits continue to face social resistance and humiliation when entering spaces associated with food preparation and public consumption.
As Dr B.R. Ambedkar repeatedly argued, caste survives not merely through economic hierarchy but through bodily practices of separation, and food becomes central to maintaining those boundaries. Raakh subtly invokes this history.
Ghanshyam’s everyday act of carrying cooked mutton into the police station therefore becomes far more than familial affection. It becomes a quiet historical reclamation. The contradiction becomes visible in one subtle but telling scene. When Ghanshyam offers food to constable Mishra — a Brahmin officer who repeatedly refuses by invoking religious fasting – Ghanshyam jokingly remarks: Kitna fasting karoge, Mishra ji? The humour masks confrontation. Mishra’s repeated excuses can be interpreted not merely as religiosity but as caste discomfort around food prepared by a Dalit household. The politics of purity and pollution have not disappeared. They simply acquire modern language. One of Raakh’s strengths lies precisely in these quiet social insertions.
Capturing the changing weapons of struggle across generations
The screenplay consistently interlaces broader structural questions into the crime narrative. Through Jayaprakash and Ghanshyam, it explores caste and institutional power. Through Rajjo and Babu, it examines poverty, masculinity and the social conditions that shape violence. Through journalist Nisar and her relationship with Jayaprakash, it gestures toward another underexplored political intersection – Muslim-Dalit solidarities. Particularly striking is the subtle generational dialogue between father and son. The father’s generation fought battles for basic dignity – the right to be socially accepted, the right to serve food without untouchability. The son’s generation fights a different battle. Recognition. Competence. Institutional legitimacy. The weapons of struggle change across generations. And Raakh captures this transition with remarkable sensitivity.
The visual language inside Jayaprakash’s home reinforces this reading. We see portraits of Ambedkar and Jyotiba Phule prominently displayed. Noticeably absent are conventional Hindu deity images or ritual markers common to mainstream family representations. The symbolism is deliberate. This is not simply a Dalit household. It is an educated, politically conscious Ambedkarite family deeply aware of its history. A flashback sequence strengthens this interpretation even further. In a public gathering, people raise slogans of “Jai Bhim” and “Jai Loknayak” while Ambedkar addresses the crowd and calls for education. Young Jayaprakash sits in his father’s lap enthusiastically repeating the slogans. The family’s social mobility is not accidental. It emerges from political consciousness.
Another subtle marker of hierarchy appears inside the police force itself. Characters such as Mishra and Chaubey – both ‘upper caste’ – are consistently addressed with the suffix “ji.” Ordinarily this might appear culturally neutral. But within Raakh, it quietly mirrors the embedded hierarchy of caste-coded respectability.
The series is equally effective in constructing its antagonists. Ramandeep Yadav and Akash Makhija deliver chilling performances as Rajjo and Babu. Their brutality is convincing and deeply unsettling. Rajjo’s character arc in particular opens interesting questions around masculinity, poverty and crime. The accusations of impotence, anxieties around masculinity and repeated social humiliation gradually shape his descent into violence.
Similarly, the character of Pyarelal opens a rarely discussed question around what might be called the desires of the marginalised. Indian society often imagines acceptable forms of upward mobility for marginalised communities – civil services, medicine, engineering. But entry into elite cultural professions – acting, fine arts, creative industries – remains structurally inaccessible despite talent. The series briefly touches this underexplored reality.
Yet Raakh is not without limitations. Its most significant weakness lies in the portrayal of Babu. The character is presented almost entirely through the framework of innate evil. From childhood onward, he appears fundamentally sadistic, violent and psychologically fixed. This aligns with what criminologists call the Classical Theory of Crime – the belief that criminality originates primarily from individual choice and inherent disposition. But this framework leaves little room for examining how violent environments shape violent individuals. Sexual violence, interpersonal brutality and extreme criminal behaviour rarely emerge in isolation. They are often learned, mimicked and reinforced through social environments.
While Raakh explores structural oppression remarkably well when examining caste and marginalisation, it becomes surprisingly conservative when portraying criminality itself. Babu’s violence remains largely reduced to individual monstrosity rather than being examined through broader psychosocial conditions. This becomes a larger storytelling contradiction. If the series asks viewers to understand how caste, class and gender structurally shape lives, then the same structural lens should ideally extend toward understanding the making of perpetrators themselves. The burden of socially informed storytelling demands such consistency.
A sincere storytelling exercise
And yet despite this limitation, Raakh remains one of the more sincere storytelling exercises in recent Indian streaming content. Its greatest achievement lies in refusing mainstream tokenism. It is equally important to acknowledge the creators and writers of Raakh – Anusha Nandakumar and Sandeep Saket– whose creative vision makes this political subtlety possible. The layered depiction of caste, institutional discrimination, historical memory and intergenerational struggle within the series reflects careful and deeply conscious storytelling. In a mainstream landscape where caste is often erased or flattened, such nuanced representation itself deserves recognition. Dalit characters here are not reduced to passive victims. Jayaprakash Jatav is aspirational, intelligent, institutionally present and politically conscious. His father carries historical memory. Their struggle is not abstract suffering.
It is negotiation with power. And perhaps the series’ most politically resonant line captures this broader anxiety perfectly. After the criminals are finally captured, Jayaprakash meets SP Indranil Hajra. During their conversation emerges a line that feels disturbingly contemporary:
“When one man’s personal belief becomes the belief of the crowd, the fabric of society starts to rot. From one termite comes thousands. And soon, the entire forest is destroyed.”
It is difficult not to hear in this dialogue an indictment of contemporary political realities. Ultimately, Raakh is far more than a crime thriller. It is a story about recognition. About caste surviving inside modern institutions. About generations fighting different battles for dignity. And about how violence – whether criminal, structural or ideological – continues shaping Indian society in ways that are far more interconnected than mainstream storytelling usually allows us to see.
Dr Neeraj Bunkar is a researcher specialising in caste and cinema.
Dheeraj Rayalu Tadi is a researcher with interests in psychology, caste, cinema, and philosophy.
This article went live on June seventeenth, two thousand twenty six, at twenty-four minutes past four in the afternoon.
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