Raakh: When the ghosts of a Delhi tragedy haunt our screens again

An ambitious retelling of the 1978 Chopra kidnapping case, the Prime Video series examines how a city’s collective trauma is repackaged for modern consumption.

The rain-slicked streets of 1970s Delhi serve as the backdrop for a chilling premise: two siblings, Suman and Sahil Sharma, hitch a ride that leads them into the clutches of two predators. For those who remember the chilling reality of the Geeta and Sanjay Chopra case, Raakh is not just another crime thriller. It is a fictionalised excavation of a national wound. The series, helmed by Anusha Nandakumar, Sandeep Saket, and Prosit Roy, takes this brutal historical chapter and shifts the lens toward the investigator, Jayprakash, played with a weary intensity by Ali Fazal.

A procedural trapped in time

While the show boasts high production values and haunting cinematography by Saumyananda Sahi, it faces a classic adaptation dilemma. By framing the narrative as a modern police procedural, the creators occasionally lose the slow-burn gravity of the era. The investigation, led by an honest yet politically hemmed-in Jayprakash, moves with a digital-age urgency that feels at odds with the fixed telephones and empty, quiet boulevards of the 70s. We see Jayprakash navigating a labyrinth of office politics and personal baggage, aided by a journalist friend, Nisar, who represents the real-world reporters like Usha Rai who once brought this horror to the public consciousness.

The burden of the retelling

The strength of Raakh lies in its performances, particularly Sonali Bendre as the grieving mother, Mona, whose desperate order to her son Sahil—"be your sister’s bodyguard"—rings with the hollow irony of hindsight. However, the series leans into a sensationalist tone that sometimes threatens to overshadow the human cost of the tragedy. While it captures the depravity of the killers, Babu and Rajjo, it struggles to balance the weight of the original 1978 event with the tropes of a modern thriller.

Why it matters: The politics of true crime

This adaptation brings into focus a recurring pattern in Indian media: our obsession with re-litigating high-profile crimes of the past. When we watch historical tragedies transformed into episodic content, the line between "tribute" and "entertainment" often blurs. The Chopra case, which culminated in the hanging of Billa and Ranga, was a watershed moment for law and order in India. By bringing it to a streaming platform, the makers invite a new generation to engage with the case, but they also risk turning raw, national grief into a commodity. The show’s success or failure rests on whether it can force us to reflect on the societal failures that allowed such a crime to occur, or if it simply uses the tragedy as a coat-hanger for a slick, fast-paced detective story.