Maargan is the story of a cop whose daughter was killed by an anonymous killer, upending his life. He found out that the killer didn’t stop after that, and kept on killing many more innocent people. So let’s find out who the killer was, what their motive was behind murdering people, and if they were caught in the end.
Spoiler Alert
Why did Dhruv want to be a part of the murder investigation?
At the beginning of the film we saw that a girl, while returning home late at night, was caught by a masked assailant. That person injected her with a drug, because of which her entire body turned black, and soon she passed away. The murderer then dumped the girl in a trash tank and escaped from there. Mumbai ADGP Dhruv Guvarak wanted to lead the investigation, but he was not allowed to do so because of things that had happened in his past. His superiors thought that he was not fit to lead such a high-profile investigation because he was just not stable enough. But Dhruv was a stubborn man, and he decided that he would use his contacts and make sure he was made a part of the investigation, even if it was on an unofficial basis. The reason why Dhruv was so desperate to find the killer was that his own daughter had been killed in the same manner. He had found the dead body of his daughter in a place where people dumped garbage. Her body too had turned black, and it seemed as if somebody had burnt it. But that pigmentation was not caused by burning; it was because of the usage of a special drug that was made by mixing high volumes of cocaine and melatonin. Just before Dhruv’s daughter, Priya, had met her fateful end, she was bullied by a few seniors in her college. Priya’s friend video called Dhruv to inform him about what was happening, and it was then that Dhruv realized the man pretending to be Priya’s senior was actually Sadiq, a criminal whom the police had been trying to find for the past 2 years. The moment Sadiq saw Dhruv on the video call, he ran away from the campus. But then the next day, Priya’s dead body was found, and Dhruv had every reason to believe that it was the doing of Sadiq himself. He had almost tracked down Sadiq, as he had gotten to know about the secret base from where his gang operated. But before Dhruv could catch hold of Sadiq, somebody injected him with the same drug. Dhruv was fortunate enough to get timely medical care. Though the drug wasn’t able to kill him, half his body turned black, just like the other victims. Dhruv had made up his mind that he wouldn’t stop until he found out who this madman was, and why he was killing innocent people.
Did Arivu have magical powers?
The name of the victim who was killed at the beginning of the film was Ramya. Dhruv and his team questioned Ramya’s boyfriend, Karthik, who had dropped her off that day at her home. They then found the CCTV camera footage through which they noticed a man wearing a hoodie, acting very suspiciously, at the same spot. It didn’t take long for Dhruv to figure out that this boy was named Tamilarivu and that he was a professional swimmer who was preparing for an upcoming state competition. Actually, it was sheer luck that Dhuv found out about Arivu. Ramya, at the time of her murder, was wearing a locket that was gifted to her by her boyfriend. Days later, Dhruv saw that somebody had drawn the same design on the rearview mirror of a dusty car. Dhruv felt that it couldn’t be a coincidence, and so he called the forensics team to find out if there were any fingerprints on the vehicle. That’s how Arivu got caught, and it came to be known that he faced accusations related to the consumption of prohibited drugs.
Arivu was taken into custody, as Dhruv had every reason to believe that he was the killer. He said that he desperately wanted to forget about his ex-girlfriend, which was why he had to take certain medications. He said that he suffered from a strange condition where, from the day he was born to the present moment, he remembered each and every detail. He told Dhruv that though his girlfriend was also named Ramya, she was not the girl who had been murdered. Ramya wanted to go to the US, and she wanted Arivu to move with her. He told her that he couldn’t do that, since he needed to look after his sister, Akhila, and also he needed to become a swimming champion and get a government job. Ramya’s boss had proposed to her, and though she did not have any intention of accepting his proposal, after her fight with Arivu, she decided to go ahead with it. Dhruv didn’t believe Arivu at first, but he was shocked when he got him tested. The doctor told Dhruv that Arivu’s mind was not like others. Even medical practitioners did not have any answers about how he could remember every little detail even from the time when he was just a year old. Apart from the fact that Arivu remembered everything that happened with him, he could also see things using his powers where he was not present physically. It was basically like he could connect to a higher power when he went inside the water and held his breath for almost 30 minutes. Through astral projections, he could track the events that happened in the past. So, even though he didn’t know where the murderer took Ramya, he could follow his car and find out the exact details. At first, Dhruv felt that it was merely his imagination, but it wasn’t so. He compared whatever Arivu told him to the information that he had in the database, and to his surprise, both of them matched. Arivu had always been intrigued by the idea of astral projection, and he felt that when he was just one year old, something strange had happened to him when he had entered the local well. He felt that he was able to connect to his subconscious self. I personally believe that Arivu was the chosen one, as no amount of meditation or practice ought to be able to give him that sort of power.
Was Dhruv able to find the killer?
There was a cosmologist named Dr. Shalini who became the next victim of the murderer. The local police couldn’t make any breakthroughs, but Arivu’s astral projections took him inside the safe house where the murderer had been hiding for many days. The walls of the entire apartment were painted black, there were drugs stored in the refrigerator, and there was that notebook in which the murderer kept records of all those he had killed. Arivuy’s astral projection noticed a copy of Time magazine on the table, and on the cover was the picture of a girl who was probably one of Dr. Shalini’s patients. The cover story, in that particular edition, was about Dr. Shalini. Since the photograph of the girl in the cover story was scribbled on with a pen, Dhruv speculated that probably that unknown girl was the next target of the psycho killer. Dhruv found out that that girl’s name was Vennila, and she happened to be an aspiring actress. Dhruv asked his team to keep a watch on her at all times. Vennila had entered the entertainment industry by accident. She was working as a receptionist at a pharmacy when Karthik, Ramya’s boyfriend, noticed her. He clicked photographs of her and showed them to a film director named Rajesh. Rajesh decided to shoot a pilot with Vennila since he found her extremely attractive. Rajesh told Vennila to get laser surgery done to lighten her skin tone. Vennila agreed, and that’s how she got introduced to Dr. Shalini. But things didn’t work out as she would have liked. Dr. Shalini used her picture for the Time magazine cover story. Rajesh wasn’t happy with that, and to make matters worse, he had to fire Vennila since the producer’s daughter wanted to be in the film. Vennila was extremely hurt, but she couldn’t do anything about it.
In Maargan’s ending, Dhruv had an epiphany of sorts. He couldn’t recall it properly, but he knew that he had seen Vennila before. After going through her images, he realized that he had seen her with Sadiq, the criminal who was at his daughter’s college and was trying to bully the students. Dhruv connected the dots, and he figured out that Vennila was not the next victim, but the murderer who had killed everybody. Just when Vennila was about to inject the producers’ daughter with the same drug, Dhurv shot at her, and I believe she succumbed to her injuries. But the question remained: what did she have to do with Dhurv’s daughter? Why did she kill Ramya, and what had Shalini done to her that she took her life too?
Why Did Vennila Murder Innocent People?
Vennila felt really humiliated when her own boyfriend, Sadiq, went and flirted with Dhruv’s daughter, Priya. The man commented upon how dark skinned his girlfriend was, and how he wouldn’t mind leaving her for somebody who looked like a golden chariot. Vennila killed Priya because she was not able to make peace with that racial remark, and it aggravated something inside her. Then she met Karthik, who clicked pictures of her and he told her how beautiful she looked. It didn’t happen often that a dark-skinned girl was called beautiful in this country, and so Vennila felt really happy about it. She got attracted to Karthik and she expressed her feelings to him. It was then she realized that he didn’t have feelings for her, and he just clicked her because he thought she had a photogenic face.
Vennila realized that even Karthik had a racial bias, and he only liked certain types of girls. She told Karthik that if he dated any girl in the future then she would definitely kill her. Karthik started dating Ramya, and the moment Vennila got to know about her, she attacked her. Vennila thought that her life would finally be back on track. When she got an offer to play the lead in a film. She went through skin lightening treatments, and that’s when she realized that she was not going to be a part of that film. She also got to know that the doctor, without her permission, had given her picture for the article that lauded her work and that was to be printed in Time magazine. Dr Shalini irked her so much that she decided to kill her too. Vennila would have killed the producer’s daughter as well, had Dhruv not intervened in between. It could be said that Vennila was a victim of the racial discrimination that exists in this country. White is good and black is bad; a poor man will always be dark skinned while a rich man will always be fair skinned. All these prejudices got to Vennila. I mean, a country that had been occupied by the colonial powers for more than two centuries should have known better. Vennila was angry in her bones, and that was the reason why she went after all those innocent people. She couldn’t differentiate right from wrong as she just sought revenge against the biased society. She met her fateful end, probably as she deserved, but that didn’t mean that society was absolved of all its sins.
