Netflix’s ‘Delhi Crime’ is a tenacious, disquieting true crime drama

True crime dramas are frequently engaging but don’t necessarily make for the easiest viewing experience. Shock, grief, and anger usually get involved as you watch the story unravel. 

All of these feelings are escalated in Netflix’s Delhi Crime. The seven-episode first season (which is mostly in English, with subtitled scenes in Hindi) is based on a real-life incident that took place in 2012 in India’s capital of New Delhi – the horrific gang-rape of a physiotherapy intern on a moving city bus.

With Delhi Crime, it’s the shock at the heinousness of the crime that comes first. The starting point of the series is the discovery of the naked, injured bodies of Deepika and Akash (names changed for the show). Akash, who has sustained bruises but is stable, tells the officers they were robbed and beaten in a bus by several men, including the driver. They proceeded to sexually and violently assault Deepika, who is now hanging on for her life.

Though I already knew most of the gory details, hearing them again hit me right in the gut. Until now, I had only read about it in the news. Now, a battered face on my screen was painfully explaining them to me all over again. 

Thankfully, Delhi Crime is not exploitative its depiction of this violence. The show does not get visually graphic about the details; we just hear about them through various characters. 

Instead, the series primarily focuses the next six days, during which a small team of police officers went on a nationwide manhunt and eventually nabbed all six culprits. The fictionalized narrative is woven together by Canadian-Indian filmmaker Richie Mehta, based on case files, interviews, and permissions he obtained. 

The show’s protagonist is Vartika Chaturvedi (Shefali Shah), a somber deputy commissioner who is naturally shaken by this brutality. She gathers a trusted crew to immediately begin working the case, including her right-hand man Bhupendra (Rajesh Taigal) and promising new trainee Neeti (a subdued, terrific Rasika Dugal). 

Shah maneuvers the complexities of her character like a pro. Vartika is a disciplined, dutiful officer who has to maintain her composure while interrogating men who committed truly violent acts. She’s teetering on the edge of breaking down, as grief and anger begin to set in, but she rarely lets go of her willpower, even in the face of personal, professional, and political obstacles. 

Her inner turmoil keeps the momentum going and keeps you invested, despite the slightly too-long 50-minute run time of each episode.

Delhi Crime tackles the investigation in a pretty straightforward manner. There are no sudden twists or eureka moments. The show has a gritty vibe throughout and is never propped up with the glamor we’ve come to expect with most Indian-origin entertainment.

The starkly middle-class portrayal of Indian police officers differs from the crime shows we usually get in the U.S. Delhi Crime nods at this in its penultimate episode when some overworked, tired local cops talk about how they lack unions, weekends off, and maybe even the correct training to carry out their tasks as efficiently as, say, the NYPD. 

The show is structured through the lens of the cops – the mounting pressure on them and their internal struggles to quell their own rage. It’s a narrative not often seen coming out of India, because of the public assumption of heavy police corruption. Delhi Crime steers away from this issue by letting a headstrong woman like Vartika be in charge and giving her crew some meaningful stories of their own.

Delhi Crime is not here to give you a happy ending. You can’t expect one anyway, and they know it too.

The series is not without its faults. This is a case that got international attention and led to several large-scale protests in New Delhi and throughout the country. Young people showed up in droves at national monuments and demanded justice, and police officers were deployed to charge at them with water cannons and sticks. The show hints at the magnitude of these consequences, but doesn’t dwell on them too much. 

I wish it had. It would have given the global audience a stronger understanding of why this particular case mattered so much, and of how public outrage forced the politicians and the police to move faster than they normally would.

There is also way too much focus on Vartika’s teenage daughter Chandni and her feelings about this case. I understand the potential of this angle — that of a young, privileged girl in dilemma as she witnesses all this trauma around her — but Delhi Crime doesn’t deliver here. Her arc mostly lends itself to the angsty teen stereotype, and adds little to the trajectory of the season. 

In the end, Delhi Crime is a moody, well-acted serialized crime drama that sets out to explore a known story in more detail. It’s not here to provide answers of why violence against women is so frequent in India. It’s not here to give you a happy ending. You can’t expect one anyway, and they know it too.

After the cops arrest the men responsible, they step out for ice cream. Neeti is remorseful. How can anyone celebrate something so dark? Vartika reminds her — and us — that this is just one case, one abhorrent crime. There have been many before and more will probably, certainly follow. 

This heartbreaking real-life crime became a catalyst for social change in India, to a certain degree. Now it’s getting a larger international platform. Delhi Crime won’t be an easy watch at times but it’s definitely a worthwhile one, especially for fans of the genre. It adds compelling and varied viewpoints to an already heavily reported stories. And as the closing credits relay, in its own way, Delhi Crime honors the legacy of the victim. 

Delhi Crime Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix; a second season featuring the same central characters but a different story has already been ordered.