‘Gaanth Chapter 1: Jamnaa Paar’ review: A bold and grisly exploration of an unnerving crime

“I have never seen anything like this before.” The phrase without which no true crime documentary is complete duly makes it to a fiction series inspired by one of the most disturbing cases in recent memory.

A police officer has walked into a house in Delhi where members of a family are hanging from the ceiling in a circular formation. Their hands are tied behind their backs. Their mouths are gagged. There are remnants of a ritual that has been performed.

All the investigators are shocked – except Gadar Singh (Manav Vij). Gadar is unperturbed by the arrangement of the bodies. Perhaps it’s the liquor in him? Not even a man hanging upside down from a tree startles Gadar. Perhaps he hasn’t reached the point in the script yet where he has to act out.

There will be other occasions for Gadar to lose his nerve. Gaanth Chapter 1: Jamnaa Paar borrows heavily from the Burari mass suicides in Delhi in 2018, which claimed 11 members of the Chundawat clan.

However, the JioCinema series directed by Kanishk Varma seeks to put a this-wordly spin on the otherworldly deaths. The screenplay, by Anagh Mukherjee, Fahim Irshad and series creator Soham Bhattacharya, wants to be more than a re-tread of an incident...

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