Review: ‘Pooja Meri Jaan’ leads viewers on, like its accused heroine

He loves her madly and deeply. Her feelings towards him are not quite clear. When he dies by suicide because she refuses to marry him, she becomes the target of public outrage, slander and a criminal case filed by his family.

Crusading lawyer Jatin (Vijay Raaz) has already declared that while he doesn’t have a problem with women, he doesn’t like misbehaving woman. And that is what Pooja (Mrunal Thakur) is for much of the world: a tease whose callousness and selfishness have snuffed out the life of Aniket (Vikram Singh Chauhan).

Navjot Gulati’s Pooja Meri Jaan was made in 2002 at the height of the MeToo movement. The Hindi film is finally out on Zee5, with a co-director credit for Vipasha Arvind. The screenplay, by Gulati and Kanishka, exploits misogynistic attitudes towards women that predated MeToo and will be around forever.

Pooja Meri Jaan follows Pooja’s defence against the accusation of abetment of suicide. Pooja has been overheard horribly berating Aniket the night of his self-erasure. Pooja’s lawyer Sana (Huma Qureshi) isn’t just a common friend to her client and the victim but is also a corporate lawyer without the experience to stand up to Jatin’s courtroom rhetoric.

The 117-minute movie leads viewers on, much like Pooja has been...

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