Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Ghamasaan brings back the dacoit genre with a gritty and realistic portrayal of ruthless bandits, featuring compelling performances from Arshad Warsi as the menacing Maharaj and Pratik Gandhi as the resolute police officer determined to bring him to justice, applauds Deepa Gahlot.
IMAGE: Arshad Warsi in Ghamasaan.
Key Points
- Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Ghamasaan revives the dacoit genre, portraying bandits as ruthless criminals driven by greed and power, rather than outlaws fighting oppression.
- Arshad Warsi delivers a powerful performance as Maharaj, a dreaded bandit, who operates with a vast network of informers and political influence.
- Pratik Gandhi plays Aditya Singh, a determined poice officer who forms a network of informers to track down Maharaj, despite the local terror and corruption.
There was a time when dacoit movies were a genre by itself.
Early films like Mother India (1957), Gunga Jumna (1961), and Mujhe Jeene Do (1963), portrayed the bandit as a baaghi (outlaw), fighting the oppression of a feudal system.
In Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Ghamasaan, the dacoit belongs to the Gabbar Singh tradition of evil men, driven by greed and power. There were legendary dacoits like Sultana Daku, Maan Singh, Paan Singh Tomar (Dhulia made an excellent film on him starring Irrfan Khan) and Phoolan Devi (Shekhar Kapur’s film on her is a milestone in Indian cinema), about whom folk songs were written and stories embellished.
Bollywood went through a brief fascination with the dacoit drama as a peg on which to hang a routine revenge story. Then, the genre petred out, leaving an occasional spark like Sonchiriya (2019) and Dacoit: A Love Story (2026).
The Fading Romance of Outlaws
Most of the real baaghis of the Chambal ravines (in Madhya Pradesh) heeded Jayaprakash Narayan’s call in 1972 to surrender.
The romance of the outlaw faded away to be replaced by the lawlessness of the remorseless criminal.
Ghamasaan is set in 2006, when Maharaj (Arshad Warsi, cast against type), based on the dreaded Dadua, hides in the jungles of Bundelkhand. He is never even photographed because no cop even got close enough to catch him.
He has a network of informers in every village, supporters among the people of his caste, top cops and even the chief minister on call. He is more Mafia don than bandit, and his word can sway elections.
When his gang beheads a whole lot of men in a village to punish an informer, the system is shaken.
The Police Challenge
IMAGE: Pratik Gandhi in Ghamasaan.
To ensure that the upcoming elections are smooth, Aditya Singh (Pratik Gandhi) and his hand-picked team of Special Task Force (STF) men are sent to camp out in the region and keep the peace.
They didn’t bargain for an officer with the drive and courage to actually go after Maharaj. He is not fazed by the terror Maharaj has unleashed, so that the local cops simply look away from his atrocities. When a constable offers Aditya a samosa, he says without irony, ‘Maharaj ko bhi pasand hai.’
Aditya forms his own network of informers made up of Balram (Anurag Thakur) and his cohorts, who are seeking revenge for the brutal massacre of their fathers, and eventually, the fearful dancer, Kalika (Rajpal Yadav), whose eye was gouged out on the orders of Maharaj.
Cat-and-Mouse Game
The bandit and his gang are one step ahead of the STF because they are tipped off by their spies.
When an anti-Maharaj story appears in a newspaper, the reporter and editor are thrashed.
Aditya gets phones of top-level people tapped — though how he does that so easily is never explained — and targets the gang’s provision suppliers and relatives to hasten the process of flushing him out.
So many films about gangsters portray them in a heroic light, and make the cops look like villains, but Dhulia does not fall into that trap.
Maharaj is despicable in every way, though the exploitation of women is kept off screen. Aditya wonders why some children in an Adivasi village look different, and is told that Maharaj’s gang hides out there, and the villagers do not believe in abortion.
Dhulia does not go into details of Maharaj’s control of the tendu leaf trade, which was one source of Dadua’s wealth, which led to his being called Veerappan of the North.
Performances and Realism
Aditya, as played by Pratik Gandhi, is resolute, but not in a macho way. His relationship with his wife (Ishita Dutta) gives the film its few moments of humour. When she is kidnapped and released to threaten him, Aditya does not retreat.
Arshad Warsi does not give Maharaj a single redeeming trait.
Warsi and Gandhi do not have a single scene together, yet the tension of the impending confrontation is built gradually. And both actors are evenly matched. The bandit is as confident of his invincibility and the cop is devoted to his mission, choosing to stay on and complete it, even when he is called back after the elections.
The supporting actors are well cast, blending effortlessly into the milieu.
Ghamasaan was completed in 2024, and probably did not get a theatrical release because it does not include mainstream elements, like the almost mandatory nautanki dance.
The songs in the background are folk numbers in the local dialect. With a story written by Ram Yash Singh, Piyush Singh, with as much realism as possible, Ghamasaan is shot (by Dev Agarwal) like a Western, in the rural and small town locations of UP.
The stark faces of the inhabitants of the squalid mud huts captured with the curiosity and detachment of the outsider.
Ghamasaan streams on Z5.
Ghamasaan Review Rediff Rating:
