Inside Tihar: Netflix's 'Black Warrant' Exposes Prison Realities

Black Warrant: Netflix Series Is A Gritty, Disturbing Look Into One Of India’s Largest Prisons

This is a very different world from the high-octane blockbuster cop entertainers that Bollywood produces, writes KE Priyamvada .

INSPIRED BY events described in the book Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailor by Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury, the Netflix show of the same name, spread over seven gripping episodes, reveals the power dynamics, gang wars and routines within this prison in Delhi, where some of India’s most hardened criminals, political prisoners and numerous inmates awaiting sentencing have been incarcerated.

ASP Sunil Gupta is played by Zahan Kapoor, as a shy young man compelled to take up the job of a jailor at Tihar jail due to his family’s financial circumstances. Gupta is physically slight, a vegetarian and unwilling to utter a curse, unlike his colleagues: a crude Haryanvi, Vipin Dahiya (Anurag Thakur lives the role); and a burly Sikh, Shivraj Singh Mangat (played competently by Paramvir Singh Cheema). The dynamic of the three colleagues moves the story forward as they encounter challenging situations in their jail environment. Zahan — who resembles his grandfather Shashi Kapoor in The Householder — grows into his role as Gupta grapples with the reality of life in Tihar, where he learns the officials face a double life sentence or ‘double umar qaid ’. This is a very different world from the high-octane blockbuster cop entertainers that Bollywood produces.

The series is also a nostalgic journey back to the 1980s, a world of black rotary phones, ambassador cars and slow-moving files and paper transactions. Gupta arrives and is not welcomed at Tihar. It takes the intervention of its star prisoner Charles Sobhraj (played creepily by Siddhant Gupta) to get him his job! The jail is run by DSP Rajesh Tomar (portrayed assuredly by Rahul Bhat) as a practised manipulator of the system, until things get out of hand. Tomar’s negotiating with gangsters within the prison to maintain law and order is a telling indictment of how corrupt the system had become.

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The series takes its name from the practice of a ‘black warrant’ being issued when a prisoner’s mercy petition is rejected and the date and time of death are notified. The judicial officer breaks the nib of his pen after signing the warrant as a symbol of the finality of issuing a death sentence. The second episode shows the last days of Ranga and Billa who were convicted of the brutal murders of Geeta and Sanjay Chopra in 1978. Their executions were carried out in 1982. The journalist Prabha Dutt is shown meeting the killers in jail shortly before their end. (Barkha Dutt has commented on social media about the series changing her mother’s name to Pratibha Sen, describing this as ‘disappointing and bewildering’. In the book, Gupta mentions that five journalists were permitted to enter Tihar jail to meet the convicted killers, after Prabha Dutt filed a petition in court. However only Billa met the journalists.) The episode chillingly depicts the preparations for the execution and how one of the killers still had a pulse a couple of hours later and how a member of the jail staff had to jump into the pit below the execution platform and pull the prisoner’s legs to hasten his end.

The series is not without its lighter moments. The third episode shows a jailbreak by a number of JNU students; political prisoners, who cleverly realise the meeting area is not closely monitored and the hot weather lets them transfer the visitor’s ink stamp on one person’s sweaty hand to another, thus enabling a large number of them to escape. A visit by then Home Minister Giani Zail Singh where he meets a drunken prisoner is another moment of light relief, as is Gupta’s neighbour asking him to get her some jail food for a superstitious reason. However, for the most part the mood is grim and the jail is shown as a place of Darwinian struggle where only the fittest, or those who can manipulate the system, can survive. Gupta realises that those with money and therefore those who can afford a good lawyer can find their way out of Tihar, but the poor, illiterate and helpless are left underserved and trapped by the system. He starts a legal-aid cell for poor prisoners to help them in their court proceedings and appeals.

One of the jarring aspects of the series is the depiction of Gupta as the only honest crusader in the system. Gupta’s family constantly infantilising him (by calling him ‘Baby’ and telling him he will be unable to do his job) is another. ‘Baby, tumse yeh naukri nahin ho payega,’ his mother tells him, while Gupta listens in stoic silence. His colleagues being rude to him is more plausible, particularly in the crudely macho world of the prison. Gupta’s girlfriend, who he meets after she accidentally calls the jail’s telephone, also comes across as incidental to the plot. But the casting of the main leads as well as many of the smaller character roles — for instance Rajendra Gupta as the jail accountant Saini Saab, who finds himself made a scapegoat by corrupt jail officials — keeps one engaged in knowing how their narrative arcs will proceed.

Created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh and with individual episodes directed by Rohin Raveendran Nair, Arkesh Ajay, Ambiecka Pandit, Singh and Motwane, the series keeps one engrossed through the length of each approximately 45-minute episode. Even slower-paced episodes such as the sixth, which deals with the execution of political prisoner Maqbool Bhat, hold the viewer’s attention with its empathy for the characters and what they live through. The production design and depiction of the jail environment are detailed and convincing and enhance the sincerity the actors bring to their roles.

While the book spans 35 years of Gupta’s career in Tihar, the series has a much shorter timespan beginning with his joining Tihar in 1981 to the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination and the anti-Sikh riots in the mid-1980s. (Spoiler alert) The end of the last episode with Charles Sobhraj escaping from Tihar jail by drugging his jailors in 1986, provides a satisfying conclusion. The soundtrack, which has had a range of Indian music till then, switches to Rossini’s Thieving Magpie which provides an apt finishing touch to this gritty and disturbing look into one of India’s largest prisons.

Disclaimer: The author is an alumnus of JNU and was also a couple of years senior to Sunetra Choudhury at high school in Delhi.

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KE Priyamvada is an editor and author. She was the winner of the television quiz show BBC Mastermind India 2000. You can find out about her books, and more, on her website.

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