Indian Predator – Beast of Bangalore review: A bleak reminder of the failings of the police and justice system

3/5

Story: In the six years between 1996 and 2002, a former CRPF and DAR trainee, Umesh Reddy goes on a rape and kill spree. He is apprehended several times, but manages to make his escape, until 2002, when he is caught and convicted in about half of the cases he confessed to. Awarded the death sentence in 2006, which was upheld by higher courts, Umesh’s clemency petition to the President was also rejected, but the delay in carrying out his sentence has resulted in him managing to get his sentence commuted to 30 years imprisonment.

Review: Netflix’s latest instalment in its true-crime documentary Indian Predator series heads south to Karnataka, where, over two decades ago, one man named Umesh Reddy caused so much terror - breaking and entering households where women were alone, then raping and murdering them, all in broad daylight - that it got people to install grilled gates outside doors for extra protection.

In the run-up to the release of the three-part documentary, there was a lot of reading up about the subject – Umesh Reddy – who has fascinated filmmakers in the past and on who at least two full-fledged movies have been made. For the most part, Beast of Bangalore felt like a dramatized version of the Wikipedia page about the man, with testimonies from police officers who were part of the investigation teams when Umesh was arrested multiple times and managed to escape too, and journalists who covered the crime beat, and, by extension, Umesh’s case.

Umesh, who is currently housed in the Central Prison in Belagavi, was not available for the documentary, as also survivors of his crimes or kith and kin of other victims. In effect, Beast of Bangalore becomes like diary entries, describing what happened, when, where, why and how and what came of it. Umesh is said to have confessed to close to 20 crimes, but was convicted in only nine of them, owing to ‘lack of evidence’ in the rest. Policing in the 90s was still rather primitive, remarks one of the journalists featured in the documentary. That and the justice system’s ‘patriarchal approach’ of admitting only those cases where the modesty of a woman was actually outraged, contributed to this collective failure.

The question that also pops to mind when true-crime documentaries about vile criminals pop up and human rights activists and psychologists are on the panel of experts called in for their two bits, more often than not, there’s an attempt at humanizing the perpetrator as a victim of social conditioning, mental inadequacies, etc. If you had the mental faculty to carefully plan and execute a crime, in Umesh’s case, stripping his victims to allow him enough time to make his escape, then you must be held accountable too.

It is believed that Umesh Reddy may have committed far more crimes than he has admitted to, and that victims have not stepped up and spoken about the sexual abuse because of how it will affect their standing in society. Even if a woman does speak up, the onus of proving the crime rests on her and getting justice, if any, comes at the cost of being torn apart by defense lawyers. It’s not what anyone would want to go through, so the better option is to forget and move on with life. In the two decades since Umesh Reddy has been apprehended and successfully kept behind bars, nothing much has changed as far as seeking legal recourse in matters of violence against women goes.

While the police officers who eventually nabbed Umesh and kept him behind bars may want to pat their backs, one cannot overlook that several of his crimes could have been avoided and many of his victims would still be around, if they'd just done their job better the first time around. 

Verdict: Indian Predator – Beast of Bengaluru is a grim reminder of the failings of law enforcement and the judicial system in providing justice to the victims of Umesh Reddy. The one-time death row inmate’s sentence was recently commuted to 30 years, of which he’s already served 20. This man, accused of unspeakable violence against women, who claims innocence, could roam our streets in another 10 years and that, I would say, is a fearsome proposition.