Directed by Akshay Shere, Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas claims to be inspired by true events, though the film doesn’t delve much into the specifics of the real case. It remains unclear how much of what is shown is based on actual facts and where the makers may have taken creative liberties to build its narrative. The film introduces us to ACP Vishwas Bhagwat, who is assigned to investigate the case of a missing girl. While a local political leader tries to turn the incident into a religious controversy, ACP Bhagwat’s investigation soon reveals that the truth is far more complex and completely different from what it appears to be. So let’s find out what happened in the film and if ACP Bhagwat was able to solve the case.
Spoiler Alert
Why was Vishwas Bhagwat transferred to Robertsganj?
Vishwas Bhagwat was a good cop, but the problem was that he got way too involved in his cases at times. He took things too personally and then ended up losing track of time. He had been given many warnings in the past, but that did not deter him from taking the law into his own hands. The real reason behind Vishwas’ hotheadedness was a traumatic past that he wasn’t able to get over. When Vishwas was just 17, his sister Mona disappeared without a trace, and she was never found again. The prime suspect back then was a man named Pandit Dixit, whom people believed to be involved in grotesque rituals. Rumor had it that he abducted young girls to sacrifice them as part of a dark ceremony meant to cure his impotency. But those theories were never proven; no girl, nor even their remains, was ever discovered. And for Vishwas, the wound never healed.
Deep down, he carried an unbearable weight of guilt. He blamed himself for what happened to Mona, unable to shake off the image of her leaving the house that day to get a shuttlecock, a moment that became his life’s greatest regret. That fleeting memory haunted him for years, and he replayed it endlessly in his mind. In every criminal he encountered afterward, he saw the face of Pandit Dixit. It was as though he was fighting the same evil again and again, trying to avenge the sister he could never save.
His obsession often got the better of him. He lost his temper during investigations, sometimes crossing professional lines. His superiors warned him time and again, telling him they wouldn’t be able to protect him unless he got his emotions under control. But how could he? That trauma had carved itself too deep into his soul. Even after all these years, the thought of Mona’s fate tormented him. He imagined the horrors she might have endured and wept at his helplessness. Beneath the rage and the pain was a brother forever trapped in that one moment of loss, unable to forgive himself. Vishwas was transferred to Robertsganj, and his superiors told him that there was a thin line between passion and madness. They told him that if he acted up again, then he would be suspended for sure. So ACP Vishwas Bhagwat arrived at Robertsganj at a time when people were protesting on the streets, as a girl had gone missing, and they believed it to be a case of love jihad.
What did Bhagwat find about the missing girls?
A girl named Poonam Mishra had gone missing, and ACP Vishwas had promised her father that he would find his daughter in the next 15 days. From Pooman’s phone records, Vishwas and his team got to know that she was talking to a particular person quite regularly. She often got calls from that number late at night, and Vishwas believed that that person could be her lover with whom she had run away. But that was not so. That number belonged to a man named Praveen Sahu, who told Vishwas and his team that his sister, Kaushalya, was the one using his phone, not him. The shocking revelation was that even Kaushalya had been missing for several months. Vishwas and his team then retrieved the call records for Kaushalya’s phone, and that’s when they got to know that throughout Eastern U.P., more than 10 girls had been missing for several months, and some for even several years. Vishwas suspected that somebody was running a human trafficking ring, and he was pretty sure that if he raided the red light area, he would be able to find those girls. But even after the raid, he didn’t find anything. Then he got to know about a photographer named Kavitha, who apparently knew Poonam. He tracked down Kavitha, suspecting that she was probably the one behind the disappearances, but that too was not the case. In fact, Kavitha herself could have easily become one of the victims, but she was fortunate enough to escape that fate. When Vishwas examined her mobile phone, he discovered that the number of one of the missing girls, Chanda Pal, who had been in contact with several victims, was saved under the name Suraj Jaiswal. When questioned, Kavitha explained that she had met Suraj a few years earlier but had lost contact with him since then. Vishwas tried to trace Suraj’s number, but every lead terminated in a dead end. With no other option left, he decided to take a calculated risk. In the end, he asked Kavitha to act as bait to lure Suraj out of hiding so that they could finally catch him and bring him into custody. Suraj’s real name was Rajkumar Siritiya, and apparently he lived a very secretive life. The man had two wives, and both of them knew about each other. Rajkumar was caught and taken into custody, but Vishwas knew that, lacking any solid evidence, he wouldn’t be able to hold him for long.
Was Rajkumar Found Guilty By The Court?
At the beginning of the film we saw how Rajkumar, aka Suraj, aka Samir, wooed girls, won over their trust, and then robbed them and killed them with cyanide. He took their jewelry, and probably that’s how he earned his livelihood. Usually, once he had gained the victim’s complete trust, he would suggest that, just to be safe after their encounter, they should consider taking a contraceptive pill. That’s when he gave them cyanide, telling them that it was a harmless ayurvedic tablet that would help their case.
At first, Rajkumar did not cooperate with Vishwas, but then he saw that his wife, Sumitra, the one who was more dear to him, was being tortured at the police station. That’s when he decided to confess to his crimes, as he didn’t want anything to happen to Sumitra. He seemed a bit obsessive about her, and so to save her life, he told the policemen, in detail, about all 19 girls he had killed. Even after that, Vishwas knew that they needed more to corroborate his confession, as otherwise he could just deny the claims. And that is exactly what happened. Rajkumar decided to represent himself, and he told the court that the police had no reasonable grounds to hold him captive. Vishwas was just not ready to let the monster go free, and luckily he was able to find out about a victim, who was still alive. Meera, the girl we saw at the beginning of the film, hadn’t taken the cyanide pill, as she had a phobia of medicine from an early age. She just licked it and because of it she was in a coma for some time. Meera changed her name and got married to another man. Vishwas tracked her and asked her to come and give testimony in court. Meera was hesitant at first, as she just didn’t want to relive her trauma. She couldn’t muster up the courage to face Rajkumar once again. But then she glanced at the photographs of the girls who were killed by that monster. It was at that moment she decided to not stay quiet. Meera gave her testimony in the court, and Rajkumar Siritiya was found guilty on all charges, and he even got the death penalty in one case.
At the end of Bhagwat Chapter One: Raakshas, we got to know that the real case went on for 14 years, and the accused, after being found guilty at the lower courts, was adamant about going to the appellate authorities and fighting for his freedom. I don’t know what the end result might be in the future, but the case will be remembered for the stubbornness shown by the police officers in charge of the case and for the courage of that one survivor who showed up in the court.
