It’s hard to tell if the cliffhanger ending of Sector 36 is hinting at a sequel or providing a resonant note of deliberate ambiguity. This is another symptom, one supposes, of a movie that doesn’t know how to treat its very serious true-crime inspiration.
As I noted in my review, this mixed approach is a problem throughout. But we’re not here to talk about quality, we’re here to talk about details. So let’s do that.
Based On A True Story
Sector 36 is about the 2006 Noida serial murders, sometimes referred to as the Nithari serial murders. Businessman Moninder Singh Pandher and his home help Surinder Koli kidnapped, sexually assaulted, murdered, and dismembered at least 30 children and one adult, with their limbs and viscera being scattered and buried all over the place to prevent detection.
The case was a profound failing of the justice system – two cops were suspended for failing to take any action despite overwhelming reason to do so – that saw the two accused men both acquitted in 2023 due to, supposedly, a lack of evidence.
Sector 36 doesn’t reimagine this case entirely, but changes a lot of the names and adds both explanatory factors for the killers’ behavior and a redemptive arc for the police force, with an indifferent, bribe-taking cop, Inspector Ram Charan Pandey, developing a sense of moral responsibility when the case gets a little too close to home.
The ending of Sector 36 finds Pandey making a last-ditch effort to ensure justice is meted out, with Balbir Singh Bassi (the renamed Pandher) and Prem (the renamed Koli) on the cusp of getting away with it.
The Smoking Gun and A Shocking Twist
The key to Bassi’s conviction is a key piece of evidence – a CD containing footage of Bassi molesting children, sent by Prem to his wife Jyoti for safekeeping. The footage is titled “Sadabahar Gaane” and is enough to implicate Bassi, who is likely to get away with everything by leaving Prem to answer for the crimes.
Not that Prem is innocent – far from it. But the rot runs deeper than one nutcase, with Bassi sitting in the midst of a black market organ-trafficking operation, as well as being an abusive pedophile. The footage is technically safe with Jyoti as she doesn’t have the means to play the disc, but Pandey knows if he can get his hands on it, it’ll be the smoking gun he needs.
However, Pandey is betrayed by Constable Shravan Kumar Pathak. After he has acquired the evidence he is brutally killed by the Jats, being stabbed several times and having his throat cut. The footage is, as far as we know, destroyed, leaving Bassi to be exonerated while Prem gets the death penalty.
Six Months Later
Six months later Pathak, on the strength of his betrayal, occupies Pandey’s former position, bossing around and berating Pandey’s subordinate Constable Bishnoi. The Jats have been arrested for their crime, but it’s a small consolation.
However, out of the blue, Bishnoi receives an anonymous package containing the Sadabahar Gaane disc. What Bishnoi decides to do with this, and who sent it to him in the first place, is left deliberately unclear.
This disc is likely a copy of the original; the Sadabahar Gaane reference certainly implies this, and it wouldn’t make much sense for it to be anything else. Whoever sent it – one suspects Prem, annoyed about being left to pay for crimes that he wasn’t solely complicit in, and the person who had the footage in the first place – clearly knows that Pathak is corrupt, hence sending it to Bishnoi, whose relationship with Pandey makes him the likeliest person to do something about it.
Will he? Well, that’s the question, but it’s a hopeful enough one that Sector 36 is able to bow out with a relatively worthwhile ending, even if some additional clarity and closure might have been nice.
