Meerapur, India: A backwater town in the Hindu heartland. An auto-wallah drops off a lone woman at a crumbling police station. 3 months ago Santosh was a housewife. When her police officer husband was murdered in communal riots, she became a widow. Her status plummeted, suddenly a burden to family and in-laws alike. But a government policy entitling her to ‘appointment on compassionate grounds’ offers a way out of the interminable domestic bleakness.
And so she starts work as a constable, her everyday life suddenly saturated with casual, soul-eroding violence. She watches, absorbs, enjoys the power of her uniform, experimenting little by little with her own violence.
When a Dalit girl is found raped and murdered in a nearby village, charismatic female inspector Sharma takes charge, pledging justice and retribution. For Santosh, she’s an exotic creature, a woman respected, even feared by men and women alike. Santosh falls for her with all the intensity of a girlhood crush and Sharma takes her under her wing.
Boosted by Sharma’s faith and her own desire for justice, Santosh grows in confidence, confronts her fear and tracks down the suspected rapist and killer. Under Sharma’s direction he is tortured to confession. Santosh partakes too. When they’ve finished with him, he’s dead.
Sharma coolly stage-manages the cover-up but Santosh is wracked with guilt and soon begins to doubt the culpability of the murdered man. She sets out on her own private investigations which lead her to a local high-caste heavyweight. Slowly she surfaces from Sharma’s spell, seeing clearly now the cozy nexus protecting him and her mentor’s place within it.
Fear and loyalty to Sharma paralyze Santosh but somehow she must redeem herself for Saleem’s death. But with the hope of justice in Meerapur such a distant possibility, it is unclear how she can make anything right again…