How do you execute a true-crime series based on something as ghastly as the 1970s Manvat murders? Details of the killings in a small Maharasthra village, which spanned a couple of years, involved disfigured and beheaded bodies of women including minors and occult practices. Such material is an easy sell for filmmakers, with loosely inspired films already made right after the case was closed. Ashish Bende’s Manvat Murders returns to the killings, focalising the perspective of the chief police investigator, Ramakant Kulkarni (Ashutosh Gowariker). A chapter from Kulkarni’s memoir, Footprints On the Sands of Crime serves as the crux of the adaptation.
The supposed ‘antagonists’ of the story are established in the first episode itself. Rukhimini (Sonali Kulkarni), a woman from the tribal community, and her upper-caste lover, Uttamrao Barahate (Makarand Anaspure) are suspected to have had some hand in the killings but the police can’t find concrete evidence. The couple wields all the wealth and influence; they are called the financial overlords of the village. Nearly everyone is in debt to them. The couple commands fear. The local police too are kept in line, by being ensured a share of business yields. There have been cover-ups of shady links between the couple and untoward incidents. When Ramakant, summoned from Mumbai, takes charge of the case, the investigation assembles transparency and tact.
Workmanlike to a fault, Manvat Murders doesn’t hide that it’s not interested in suspenseful revelations. But it also can’t help courting the same. Each episode ends with a contrived hook to ensure a flare of curiosity for the next. As a result, the series contradicts its own design.
A spate of issues recurs throughout—the background score’s abrupt insertion of horror is so bald it’s embarrassing. Occasionally, eerie chuckles overlie a scene to amp up the dread; what’s established instead is cornily interpreted dread. Irrepressible dullness starts to cloud the storytelling. There are strong implications of varied caste rungs linked to the murders. But the series ducks that angle, subsiding rather within the folds of the everyday search for new pointers. You can tell Bende’s investment in the story slants more to plodding police work than a complex network of strands, which the series sometimes rake up. To that end, the narrative whips out few chase sequences, small covert operations. We are reminded frequently of the “invisible” alcohol peddling setup the couple make their fortunes off. But it is quickly dispensed with an ambush scene and the series diverts to the voodoo dealings in the case.
Though the series rests its axis on Ramakant, the sole relationship it builds between him and us is admiration and awe at his unconventional strategies. To bolster proof of his unusual interrogation style, we get a clutch of scenes that begin identically. Ramakant opposes hardline tactics. Thrashing suspects to force out a confession doesn’t exist in his rulebook. His line of enquiry is deliberately drawn-out, testing the patience of the suspect. Once someone is taken in custody, he makes them wait for hours on end. Then he offers a cup of tea and gently nudges the suspect to open up. As if we didn’t know what’s going on, supporting characters helpfully explain Ramakant’s interest in criminal psychology.
Ramakant is soft-spoken and measured. Gowariker is pleasant to watch until his performance starts giving away the material’s limitations. The actor hogs the most screentime yet I struggle to recall a scene which sparkles. The nice-mannered demeanour, his character doling out a customary ‘good job’ to an officer completing a basic task—these become pedestrian in the series’ efforts of showing a more genial police structure than how it functioned before he intervenes. Comic relief stems also through the junior police officers attempting to imitate and curry favour with Ramakant, and failing. It’s too little to salvage the strenuously straight-faced tone of the series.
Manvat Murders is too laboured in its storytelling to excite or stimulate even on a conceit level. Everything about it is wooden and ill-fitted. Parts of it don’t conjoin to create a spiky dissection of womanhood, especially motherhood-related anxieties which belie the drama. Rukhmini envies her sister, Samindri (Sai Tamhankar) for having a child, while she can never be a mother. In many ways, it’s she who propels the narrative. Her desperation for a child makes her morally and emotionally immune to the consequences of events she engineers. She has no compunction whatsoever in making other mothers childless if it seals her own motherhood. She doesn’t stop to consider the price of her actions, dismissing the advice of her husband who seems more startled at the spiralling situations. However Girish Joshi’s screenplay gives Kulkarni awful little to work with. Either she has to be straight-up nasty and project intimidating villainy or she cries a river.
Straggling over eight episodes, Manvat Murders is overstretched. A languid rhythm works when it’s propped up by telling details. You’ll wonder though why the series fusses about the change in settings. Parbhani is an area where a chunk of critical action is also set. But the series never evokes authenticity in recreating a period or a place. Locations look disconnected; several scenes inside houses and on lanes feel set-like.
There’s even a hidden treasure angle to the case. But the series holds back despite a leisurely span of time which it invests in every murder that plays out in dreary flashback almost twice for no good reason. As if that doesn’t suffice, the series ties up things with the officer sermonising on fixing the system. Bende can’t resist giving a final valiant note to Gowariker. By the time his character exhorts on cleaning up systemic rot at the end of an interminable episode wadded with exposition, Manvat Murders has lost the thread to make us remotely care.
