Sector 36 Plot Summary
Sector 36 is the latest film from Netflix India and is a shocking thriller based on the true events of the 2006 Noida serial murders. Helmed by Aditya Nimbalkar and Bodhayan Roychaudury, the movie stars Vikrant Massey as Prem, Deepak Dobriyal as Inspector Pandey and Akash Khurana as the employer, Bassiji.
The crime thriller is set in Sector 36 of Noida and follows the serial killer Prem Singh who has been kidnapping slum children for organ harvesting. He has the perfect set-up as he is based out of his employer’s home who is never in the city. But his years-long streak is broken when he ends up targeting the child of the corrupt cop, Ram Charan Pandey.
Well, with all those complicated plot twists and surprising ending, we have decided to look into the movie and explain as much as we could understand ourselves.
Why does Inspector Pandey have a change of heart?
At the beginning of the movie, Pandey is flippant with the victims’ families, refusing to file FIRs, paying them off and scolding them for irritating him. He believes the kids keep running away so there is no point in searching for them. But during Dussehra, while he and his family are celebrating, a masked Prem kidnaps Pandey’s daughter, Vedu.
Pandey spots her just in time and rescues her but loses Prem. His wife is furious as she calls him out for being an incompetent cop and father and demands that he catch Prem. He also feels guilty for turning away the victims’ families after experiencing the same thing as them. His daughter’s almost kidnapping changes him and he starts with the missing case of Chumki, the young hooker who used to be a regular of Bassiji’s.
However, DCP Jawahar Rastogi is friends with Bassiji and threatens Pandey to leave him alone. He instead, tells Pandey to focus on the case of a missing child who comes from a rich and influential family. But a fire is lit in Pandey and he continues to look into the missing slum children even after he is suspended.
How does Pandey realise that Prem is the killer?
Pandey is forced to let go of Chumki’s regular auto driver who is the last one to see her at Bassiji’s. But while giving him his things, Pandey notices that the driver has a fancy phone. He goes through it and sees that the only number on it is Prem’s.
He interrogates the driver and learns that on Chumki’s last night alive, Prem had asked for her and not Bassiji. When he went to pick her up after the hook-up, Prem shared that he had dropped Chumki at the railway station and gave him her phone, telling him to throw it. Hoping to blackmail him in some way, the driver kept the phone.
After Pandey is suspended, he randomly stalks Prem and sees that he mostly hangs out with the compounder, Chote Lal who is also part of the organ trafficking. Later, during Diwali, Pandey and his subordinate, Pathak are drinking when they spot Chote Lal again.
Pathak praises him for taking Vedu to the hospital instantly and something goes off in Pandey’s mind. He realises that Chote Lal was ready with the ambulance because he is the kidnapper as well. The cops beat him up till he confesses that Prem is the mastermind and that he is only an accomplice.
Who kidnaps the compounder, Chote Lal and why?
When Pandey informs his new superior, Saikia, about the compounder’s confession, Rastogi is present. He believes that Pandey’s true target is Bassiji and he alerts him. He manipulates a low-level cop to find out what Pandey is up to and then sends some thugs to get Chote Lal. The thugs kill him so that Pandey won’t have any evidence to arrest Prem or Bassiji.
However, Saikia allows Pandey to bring in Prem to question him. During his interrogation, Prem shares that Bassiji will always look out for him. But it may be more than that as we see that he knows all about Bassiji’s hook-ups and also has access to all the videos the old man records with his hookers.
It can be deduced that the successful family man Bassiji needs to keep Prem happy otherwise he will ruin his reputation by telling everyone about his sexual encounters. This is seen when the cops ask Prem about Bassiji’s involvement in the murders but he refuses to answer. But at the end of the movie, Bassiji is also arrested as an accomplice for trying to cover up for Prem.
Why does Prem confess to everything?
From the beginning of Sector 36, it is evident that something is off about Prem as on one hand, he is extremely loving and kind to his wife and daughter while on the other hand, he kills and engages in necrophilia. The childhood trauma from his uncle regularly molesting him may have also played a part in his personality.
When he is brought in for his interrogation, he is extremely confident, cocky and not only confesses to killing, eating and harvesting the corpses, but he also gleefully shares how he does it. He keeps fixing his hair and hopes they can finish up quickly so he can go home and watch his TV show.
When Pandey gets incessant and asks why he targeted the kids, he claims that the slum kids have no future. By harvesting their organs, they can be the lifelines of rich people who will amount to something. The real killer that Prem is based on is said to be a psychopath.
What happens at the end of the movie?
The locals riot as they demand capital punishment for both Prem and Bassiji. The higher-ups also need to hold someone responsible for letting the murders happen for so long. And so they suspend Pandey and the two sub-inspectors before him. However, Shaikia is promoted as DCP for solving the case.
Rastogi is part of the initial investigation team and he pins all the blame on Prem while claiming that Bassiji is not at all involved. Hoping to take Bassiji down as well, Pandey manipulates Prem into revealing what he has on Bassiji. Turns out, Prem sent the recordings of Bassiji raping someone to his wife. Pandey takes the recording from her but while returning from Prem’s village, Rastogi’s thugs kill him.
At the end of the movie, we see that it is Pathak who sold out Chote Lal and Pandey’s location to Rastogi in exchange for a promotion. However, Prem’s wife has more recordings and sends them to Bishnoi who is now being mistreated by his former colleague, Pathak. He also sees in the news that the three thugs have been arrested in Pandey’s case.
Read More: Sector 36 Review