He is sharp but weird. These are the two adjectives that the residents of Rautu ki Beli, a quiet village in Tehri Garhwal, use to describe Deepak Negi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). A police inspector struggling to break the shackles of personal trauma, a usually sleepless yet canny Negi wakes up one day to find that a murder has broken the tranquillity of his serene territory.
Sangeeta (Narayani Shastri), the warden of a school for the blind, has been found dead in her room. The staff of the school insists it is a natural death. Negi’s team of laggards led by a well-meaning Dimri (Rajesh Kumar) don’t seem eager to stretch themselves.
But, the post-mortem report and the intuition of Negi say there is something unusual about Sangeeta’s demise. As the personal and professional intertwine, Negi sheds the inertia around him to have a crack at the murder mystery. The scene of the crime is dotted with red herrings, plenty of witnesses, and several backstories where characters cross each other’s paths.
The needle of suspicion moves towards the school’s founder Kesari (Atul Tiwari) but like the roads on the hills, the investigation either meanders or meets dead ends. Not one to mince words or buckle under political or departmental pressure, Negi pursues the case with dogged determination. However, the adjectives that the villagers use to describe Negi also define the storytelling, at times.
Writer and director Anand Surapur ( The Fakir of Venice ) and co-writer Shariq Patel have cr.