Black Warrant, a seven-episode Netflix series, dives into the brutal, complex ecosystem of Tihar Jail in the 1980s to chronicle its politics, and angst of the inmates
For a country so invested in rewriting history, it is shocking that there exist so few films and shows that tackle the contours of modern Indian history. Narratives set in pre-Independence India abound in Hindi cinema habituated to churning out period films by the dozen even though filmmakers are rarely burdened by facts or historical accuracy. Oftentimes, the genre, which spans historical biopics and narratives tracking several periods of the country’s freedom movement, becomes a means to an end — a way of reiterating religious extremism of the present rather than investigating the social conscience of a nation.
Even then, these historical accounts, which resemble each other if not overlap in concerns, appear to have an expiry date of independence. The rare times that storytellers remain invested in tracking the aspirations and anxieties of independent India stem from events of political consequence, whether it is the selective portraiture of the late Manmohan Singh in Vijay Ratnakar Gutte’s The Accidental Prime Minister (2019), the fissures of Partition in Nikkhil Advani’s Freedom at Midnight (2024), or the politics of Indira Gandhi in Emergency, Kangana Ranaut’s biopic, which releases on January 17.
It is this limited definition of historical narratives that Black Warrant, a seven-episode Netflix series tracking the inmates and jailers running Tihar Jail — Asia’s largest prison complex — in the 1980s, seeks to counter. Co-created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh, the series is a compelling, clinical marriage of true crime and a historical perspective of a country finding its footing amid political and social turmoil.
Politics and angst inside Tihar jail
Motwane and Singh, along with co-writer Arkesh Ajay, adapted the series from Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer, the 2019 nonfiction book written by Sunil Kumar Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury. Gupta, who served as a Tihar jailer for 35 years, acts as the entry point to this ecosystem where inmates serve out their sentences while the jailers are condemned to a “double life sentence.”
Told from the perspective of Gupta (played by a sincere Zahaan Kapoor, last seen in Hansal Mehta’s 2022 film Faraaz), Black Warrant hits the ground running, familiarising viewers with the hierarchies of the citizens populating Tihar. On paper, this ecosystem is headed by the mercurial DSP Tomar (Rahul Bhat in a scene-stealing turn) and his subordinates, who include new recruits Gupta, Mangat (Paramveer Cheema), and Dahiya (Anurag Thakur). But a different picture emerges halfway through the first episode when we learn that all that distinguishes the jailers from the inmates — separatist leaders, hardened criminals, protesting students, and even Charles Sobhraj (Sidhant Gupta going full camp) — is their uniform. In reality, Tihar appears less as a prison complex governed by law enforcement and more of a lawless jungle divided into factions fluent in favours, systemic corruption, and stone-cold violence.
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Directed by Motwane, the opening episode does a tremendous job of balancing scene-setting with world-building. The language of everyday prison details — convicts are identified as B and C class inmates, gangs carry out alcohol and drug trades from the confines, the killing of a snake wipes off 15 days from one’s sentence — is absorbing. Power and pride are the bargaining chips in a world where survival remains only within reach for the fittest. The illusion of justice and the repercussions of seeking it in a machinery designed to look the other way, casts a shadow on every single moment. Working with production designer Mukund Gupta and cinematographer Saumayananda Sahi’s agile eye, Motwane extends the same tension to his sense of space, visually contextualising the relentless politics and angst in the sprawling Tihar compound that houses 1300 inmates originally meant for 700.
Little details, and stylistic flourishes
If the first episode succeeds in sustaining its bleak tone, it is Black Warrant’s standout second episode — directed by Motwane and written by Ajay — that cements the show’s unsparing outlook toward its protagonists. It’s 1982 and the action revolves around the death sentence of killers Ranga and Billa — the first hanging that Tihar witnesses in five years. The enormity of the event puts the Tihar staff on the edge: a suspended Gupta is brought back on hanging duty; the safety of his job, Tomar tells him, rests on the smooth execution of these two criminals. Two hangmen are brought in to carry out the hanging; Dahiya joins them in massaging butter and banana pulp on the noose, another nugget of Indian prison history that proves to be valuable to the show’s competency.
These little details are elevated by stylistic flourishes: a black and white Rashomon-like flashback montage, a yelling chain that moves from the Superintendent (Tota Roy Chowdhury) to Tomar and ending at Gupta firing the two executioners; a brazen display of the prison power pyramid. Things go awry not with a bang but with a whimper. The hanging itself acquires another layer of brutality and dark comedy when a panicked doctor informs the gathered staff that one of the convicts seems to be alive even after the hanging. His death comes right after but the circumstances allow no winning, a small moment in an episode but a giant leap for the storytelling prowess of the makers.
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The evidence is in the choices that define Black Warrant, such as its insistence on straying from mainstream convention of prison thrillers, in particular the reliance on easy resolutions. A lot happens over the course of the seven episodes — hangings, affairs, transfers, gang wars, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, heists, escapes, surprising romances — but these events don’t unfold in isolation. They exist to inform the viewer’s understanding of both the personal and the political: a society’s definition of crime and punishment as well as the moral culpability of a country newly tasked with ruling itself. In that, Black Warrant frequently sidesteps the brute force of cliffhangers, dramatic plot twists, or sudden misfortune in its storytelling, recognising its dramatic heft instead in the ordinariness of systemic oppression. Even though the show follows Kapoor’s Gupta, a misfit in an overtly masculine landscape, he doesn’t end up as someone who undergoes an overnight transformation. Similarly, Bhat’s Tomar isn’t reduced to a corrupt antagonist. The missteps and evolution are all but small steps but it is their far-reaching effects that the makers gently goad viewers to observe.
The contradictions of duty and patriotism
It is also this attention to the minutiae coupled with the taut writing that transforms Black Warrant into a focused workplace drama interested in the contradictions of duty and patriotism. Six years after Sacred Games, the first Indian Netflix series, Motwane returns to another literary adaptation with Black Warrant. Yet, if the book spans 35 years of Gupta’s life at Tihar, the show’s first season only captures four years — another terrific choice in a show made up of terrific choices. The creators slow down the proceedings instead of turning Black Warrant into a highlight reel, its fictionalised retelling effectively allowing viewers to feel fully immersed in the fate of its central protagonists. Perhaps, that is why, their inner confusion — Tomar’s fractured family life, Mangat’s alcoholism in the backdrop of the anti-Sikh riots, Dahiya’s outburst in the wake of an exposed affair, the unending humiliations endured by Gupta — feels so urgent. The methodical direction of the show’s execution underlines a commitment to filmmaking that refuses to rest only on ambition and noble intentions.
Right at the end, Motwane returns to helm another episode, splitting directing duties for the remaining four episodes with Singh, Ajay, Rohin Raveendran Nair, and Ambiecka Pandit. The roster of directors achieve something singular: a uniformity of storytelling that doesn’t come at the cost of individual styles. Each episode as a result feels like a self-contained mini-series of its own, regulated by ways of seeing and feeling that never loses sight of the larger picture or overstays its welcome.
Of course, much of their work is ably shouldered by the in-form ensemble, performers who build a chemistry with each other that flits between protection and alienation, that makes every exchange unpredictable if not, menacing. But it is worth noting that Black Warrant acts as a showcase for three of the directors — Ajay, Nair, and Pandit — who have previously only directed shorts. With the exception of anthologies, I don’t remember the last time an Indian show took it upon itself to bet on filmmakers without a feature director credit — even though there is no reason for it not to be the norm. In that sense, Black Warrant reinforces the opportunity and responsibility of Indian streamers to democratise long-format storytelling just by making room for newer voices and perspectives.