Creators of true crime shows are not above playing judge, jury and executioner. The Docubay original The Dupatta Killer, directed by Patrick Graham, is driven by firm conviction that its subject is guilty as well as doubt about his potential release from prison and re-integration into society.
The documentary, which is nearly an hour long, explores a series of murders allegedly committed by Mahanand Naik in the 2000s and 2010s. Naik, from Goa, was accused of luring women, strangling them with their dupattas and decamping with their money and jewellery. Although accused of killing 16 women, Naik was eventually convicted for two murders.
Naik, who has always maintained his innocence, has been in a prison in Goa for at least 14 years. The Sentence Review Board is considering his appeal for a release. Do the makers of The Dupatta Killer hope to influence the board’s members? That certainly seems to be the case, given the film’s insistence on Naik’s culpability despite arguments to the contrary by his lawyers.
The Dupatta Killer includes an interview by a priest, Maverick Fernandes, who had stood guarantor when Naik sought parole. Might not a convict change in prison, Fernandes asks – especially if he might not even be the murderous monster of the public imagination?
Reform isn’t something in which The Dupatta Killer is interested – or even scepticism, for that matter. Having bought into Naik’s guilt, the film lines up social workers (one of whom recommends hanging him) and a former police inspector who says he had wanted to “kill” and “chop” Mahanand after he arrested.
The archival footage featured in the film is from a journalist who has been obsessively tracking the case to the point that he calls himself an “expert” on all things Mahanand Naik.
Director Patrick Graham does not conduct his own independent investigation into whether Naik is a rampaging killer. A case involving a woman whom Naik allegedly stalked and raped over a number of years is the most interesting aspect in a typically sensational film, which is packed with unnecessary reconstructions and ominous background music.
In its rush to judgement, the documentary resembles Curry & Cyanide: The Jolly Joseph Case and several films on the Nithari murders. The dropping of charges against Surendra Koli and Maninder Singh Pandher, the main accused in the Nithari case, should have given the minds behind The Dupatta Killer pause for thought.
Instead, The Dupatta Killer meets Mahanad Naik’s neighbours, who want him to rot in prison forever and are worried that he might seek revenge. He has ruined Goa’s fair name, one man says.
The documentary’s title gives its game plan away. The Alleged Dupatta Killer it isn’t.
