1. It is pertinent to note here, that according to a 2019 survey of the representation of crime and punishment in Indian cinema, television, and web shows, “a large percentage of senior lawyers, judges, and police officers were [found to be] portrayed by Hindu, upper-caste, male characters” (Viswanathan et al). [return to page 1]

2. While Kaalkoot is an eight-part Hindi-language web series that premiered on the OTT platform Jio Cinema, Kohrra is a six-part Punjabi-language web series that premiered on Netflix; both shows released within a week of each other, in July 2023. Both are set in contemporary small-town north-India—the former in Uttar Pradesh and the latter in Punjab.

3. The immediate and intense scrutiny that the murder and disappearance of two upper-class men cause in Kohrra forms a telling contrast to the invisibilisation of abducted and (serially) murdered oppressed-caste women in films and shows like Kathal and Dahaad, which centre the Dalit female cop (see Sengupta). [return to page 2]

4. Balbir’s escalating perception of emasculation is especially apparent in a dream sequence, where a younger version of himself goes in search of his daughter who has run away from him, only to enter a room where Paul kneels down to perform fellatio on him, Steve Dhillon shoots him dead, and as he falls, he sees his dead wife’s feet dangling above his own fallen body.

5. This is what distinguishes them from the small-town cops of mainstream films, whose endorsement of vigilante masculinity and extra-legal procedures of justice transform the “mofussil as a possible site where the state readily transgresses the limits of its own legality in order to ensure justice” (Sinha 138).