Santosh: Power Corrupts
by Nirica S.
When Santosh finds herself widowed at 28, grieving, alone, and unsure of what her options are, she is offered “compassionate appointment”—the opportunity to inherit her late husband’s job as a police constable. She takes it, having little choice. Her husband was a good policeman, she’s told. Perhaps she will be one, too.
It doesn’t look easy. From her early days on the force, Santosh flounders, unsure of how to find her place in a job she doesn’t seem to want, and which doesn’t seem to want her. The police system is authoritative, casually casteist and Islamophobic, and violent—a men’s club where lines of gender, caste, and religion are harshly drawn. She faces misogyny from her peers and supervisors. She spends her days walking an inspector’s dog, following the cue of the few other female officers, and moral policing couples in public parks. There’s a marked passivity to her days in which she follows orders and accepts what comes her way. When she does try to make her mark—standing up for a Dalit man who tries to report his daughter as missing—she, and he, are laughed out of the building.
The turning point happens when the missing persons case turns into murder, and Santosh finds herself teamed up with the hardened officer Geeta, part of an effort to quell murmurings of public disappointment with the police force. In Geeta, we see what Santosh’s future could look like—Geeta is respected, even liked amongst male peers; she is unafraid of using her authority. As they zero in on their prime suspect, the victim’s Muslim boyfriend, Geeta encourages Santosh to take a more active role in the investigation, even as it gets more and more violent.
Santosh (2024) isn’t a police procedural or a boilerplate thriller; it’s a character study. Director Sandhya Suri is less interested in what unfolds in the investigation—which involves tracking suspects through cities, looking through phone messages, and an ultimate act of violence—than in how Santosh responds to it. Shahana Goswami plays Santosh with a certain wide-eyed quality, one that subtly betrays her response to the realities around her, whether that’s a bribe or an act of police brutality. We see Santosh waver on the careful line between action and inaction—caught between her own morals and what the job expects.
And it isn’t difficult to sympathize with Santosh. Much of the first half of the film, after all, shows us exactly how isolated she is. We are reminded of what it means to be a woman in this country: as she tracks her suspect down alleyways, we feel the claustrophobia of the close focus, acutely aware that she—despite being a policewoman—is still alone in patriarchal India, without protection or phone battery. But the systems of gender, caste, and religion are complex, interlocking realities in contemporary India. Santosh reminds us, too, of the ways in which privilege and power can be weaponized. When Santosh finally takes a decisive step over the line into action from inaction, it’s strikingly bleak how inevitable it feels.
Santosh is the story of a confused, broken system run by the whims of those in power who are only emboldened by their authority. Her husband was a “good policeman,” Santosh is told, but the film wonders whether such a thing is even possible. The bones of Santosh could very easily have told the story of a young woman succeeding against all odds, rising into higher ranks within a powerfully patriarchal system—a tale of female empowerment. But life is rarely that simple. Santosh knows that, and it eschews a neat wrap-up for something far greyer. This isn’t the story of an ascent. It’s a slow descent, lower and lower into a deeply corrupt system. No one is innocent.