How Sandhya Suri’s Santosh, UK’s entry for Oscars, exposes India’s caste, religious fault lines

Set in a fictional, nondescript northern Indian state called Chirag Pradesh, it’s the story of Santosh Saini (Shahana Goswami), who is thrust into a patriarchal system after the sudden death of her husband, a police officer whose job she gets through a government scheme that grants employment to widows. Santosh, burdened with grief and uncertainty, joins the local force and is soon embroiled in the investigation of the murder of a Dalit girl named Devika (Nandani Tharu), whose swollen body is found in a well. The crime ignites a storm of outrage. What begins as a straightforward probe quickly evolves into an expose of institutional corruption, and the discrimination on the basis of gender, caste and religion. The film makes it devastatingly clear: even when women wear the uniform, they’re not spared the insidious influence of entrenched social hierarchies. Instead, they are twisted by the same corrupt forces, and wielded as tools to enforce the status quo.

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In the line of duty

At its core, Santosh is a police procedural, but it’s more interested in subverting the genre’s conventions than adhering to them. The police force in the film becomes a cog in a larger system that perpetuates inequality and violence. Through sharp dialogue and tense exchanges, the film shows how the police, instead of protecting the vulnerable, often serve as instruments of oppression. When the authorities, under intense public scrutiny, reluctantly launch an investigation into the Dalit girl’s murder, it brings Inspector Geeta Sharma (Sunita Rajwar), a tough and seasoned officer, to the forefront. Santosh is assigned as her assistant, and together, they navigate the fraught terrain of caste, gender, and power that shapes every step of their inquiry.

Santosh begins the investigation with a naive belief in the institution’s potential for justice. She is after all someone who has joined the force with a raw idealism that contrasts sharply with the cynicism of Inspector Sharma, who has long accepted the moral compromises that come with the job. Sharma’s experience has hardened her; she understands that the police are rarely agents of change. This dynamic between the two women forms the emotional and intellectual core of the film, as each character wrestles with the ethical dilemmas presented by the case. The caste equations that underlie the investigation become evident soon. The Dalit community is dismissed by the police at every turn. When Devika’s father first reports her missing, he is met with apathy and suspicion. It is only when the media gets involved that the investigation gains any real momentum. Even then, it is clear that the police’s primary concern is not justice but damage control.

Santosh and Sharma, though worlds apart in their approach to policing, have to contend with the inherent misogyny of their profession. The male officers around them belittle their efforts, question their competence and undermine their authority. In this environment, both women must carve out spaces for themselves, sometimes at the expense of their personal integrity. Santosh’s struggle is particularly poignant. As a widow, she is burdened not only with the expectations of her role as an officer but also with the weight of her late husband’s legacy. Her entry into the police force is not a choice but a necessity, a means of survival in a society that offers few options for women in her position. Suri’s direction captures this internal conflict with subtlety, allowing Goswami’s restrained performance to convey the complexities of a woman torn between personal grief and professional duty.

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Inspector Sharma’s pragmatism, which borders on ruthlessness, is not a reflection of her lack of empathy but a survival mechanism in a system that rewards aggression and subservience to power. Rajwar brings a gritty authenticity to the role, balancing her character’s jaded outlook with moments of vulnerability that reveal the toll her job has taken on her. Through these two characters, Santosh presents a nuanced exploration of what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal setup. The film does not offer easy resolutions or neat character arcs; it merely presents the choices available to these women, constrained as they are by the oppressive structures they inhabit.

Religious fault lines and caste politics

Santosh is a deeply political film that refuses to shy away from the caste and religious divides in contemporary India. The murder of a Dalit girl also becomes a catalyst for exposing the festering social tensions that pervade every aspect of life in the town. Suri’s script deftly incorporates these dynamics without resorting to heavy-handed exposition. She relies on the interactions between characters to reveal the prejudices that drive the plot.

A local Muslim boy, who was seen speaking to Devika shortly before her death, becomes an easy scapegoat for the police, who are eager to close the case and quell the public outcry. Devika’s caste identity, on the other hand, makes her life — and by extension, her death — of little value to those in power. The police, representing the upper-caste establishment, treat the case as an inconvenience, only pursuing it when forced by external pressures.

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Lennert Hillege’s cinematography alternates between the raw, unfiltered realism of the town’s landscape and the claustrophobic interiors of the police station, the den of corruption. The camera lingers on moments of quiet despair, capturing the characters’ internal struggles without resorting to melodrama. This is mirrored in the pacing of the film, which deliberately avoids the high-octane rhythms of conventional thrillers. Instead, Suri allows the tension to build gradually, focusing on the psychological toll of the investigation rather than the mechanics of the crime itself. The landscape — dry, dusty, lifeless — mirrors the moral vacuum at the heart of the town and its institutions. There is no escape from the rot, no oasis of hope. The water, contaminated by Devika’s body, becomes a metaphor for the poisoned wellspring of justice itself, a system tainted beyond repair.

The film’s score, composed by Benedict Taylor, underscores this grim atmosphere; it’s mostly silence that amplifies and orchestrates the sense of unease. The music is sparse, almost minimalist, punctuating key moments with subtle, dissonant chords in sync with the growing moral ambiguity faced by the characters. This minimalist approach extends to the film’s dialogue as well, which is refreshingly devoid of the overwrought monologues often found in similar films. Instead, Suri trusts her audience to pick up on the unsaid.

Every scene is suffused with a sense of foreboding, a tension that never fully breaks. This is because Santosh does not offer the catharsis or resolution that audiences might expect from a police procedural. Instead, it forces viewers to confront the uncomfortable realities of a justice system that is anything but just, especially for those living on the margins of society. Suri seems to pose a question to all of us: Is justice ever possible in a system so deeply, so gratuitously compromised? There are no heroes in Santosh, only people grappling with their own complicity in a corrupt system. Santosh is a timely and vital piece of cinema that deserves to be seen — not just for its technical achievements, but for the way it examines real India.