Review: ‘Prahaar: The Ujjwal Nikam Story’ is in an argument with itself

One of Rajkummar Rao’s finest performances is in Hansal Mehta’s biopic Shahid (2012), as the lawyer Shahid Azmi who defended Muslims falsely accused of terrorism. In Avinash Arun’s Prahaar, Rao once again portrays a real-life lawyer, fighting this time on the side of the establishment.

Prahaar: The Ujjwal Nikam Story follows the public prosecutor who represented Maharashtra in the trial of Ajmal Kasab, the only terrorist to be captured alive in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. The legal proceedings ran on for four years. After exhausting all his appeals, Kasab was hanged in 2012, at the age of 25.

In 2008, the Mumbai Mirror tabloid’s Sebastian D’Souza memorably photographed Kasab conducting his gruesome operation in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj train terminus, where numerous commuters died. The dramatised account of the trial of the Lashkar-e-Taiba operative expands on – and heavily pads – what amounts to an open-and-shut case, in which guilt is easily established and the motivation behind the slayings is no secret.

Shot by Avinash Arun himself, Prahaar is a slick, occasionally gripping chronicle of a conviction foretold. When the film’s hero takes on the Kasab case, he already has a reputation for his short temper and winning streak. Shown to be working all by himself, without any supporting lawyers, Nikam gets...

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