Beast of Bangalore: Indian Predator

Indian Predator: Beast of Bangalore

A guy from a village in Karnataka, lives in Bangalore, and has a weird kind of fetish of collecting women's undergarments, his name was Umesh Reddy. He also attacked many women and assaulted them sexually. One of those women became mentally disturbed, she couldn't even say anything in her defense.

Later on, the court acquits him in most of those cases on the basis of lack of proper evidence. The evidence police found through investigation wasn't acceptable in court and the kind of evidence the court wanted could not be made available. During investigation and trial, he was successful in escaping many times from police's custody.

He gets a death sentence but finally it gets converted to life imprisonment and he is still behind bars.

This is a sordid true crime drama, that somehow manages to rise above its format to deliver a powerful message about being convicted by the media. And about the corruption that is rampant in the Indian justice system. And the plight of women in that country. There's a profound moment when the filmmakers show an out take of an interview with a police officer, and he says that in the case of a sexual assault, the woman is at least 25% to blame. At another time in the series, a police officer is being interviewed, this is a different police officer, and he casually mentions that the police have their ways of getting suspects to talk. By which he means torture. And what is even more baffling is that the same suspect was allowed to escape from police custody twice. And some of the explanations that the police officers come up with are just hilarious. For example, one says that one of the officers was diabetic, so he was peeing more slowly and that gave the suspect a chance to escape. By the end, we do not know if the main suspect actually was guilty of any crime he was charged with, and I don't think the filmmakers care either. It's not a good series, but it is an eye-opening one.

I know this case in early 2000s when this was a sensational news and so many stories about umesh reddy used to come on media. The Netflix documentary is very slow. They have recreated the videos of violence committed by umesh but they never show it properly. The faces are blurred and not shown properly even in recreated videos. What is the use of adding recreated videos if it was not meant to be shown?

The pace of the documentary is also very slow. Watching in 1.5x also feels slow. The interviews of many police officers were not needed at all. How did they solve the case, how did they gather evidence nothing was shown.

I watched the entire story as I was in college during 2003 and the fear of him being escaped from jail was clearly visible.

My views here are

1. It fails to show how police department were in dark with such psychos at that time, he came out of nowhere and his crimes were beyond the sense at that time. (Include Dandupalya Gang)

2. It fails to probe the psychic mentality of the man, how few monsters are in our society and what their thinking is.

3. The failure of judicial system is not shown at all, except for the final Lady Judge, all other were equally responsible for his release.

4. It should have should how the police department did try to eventually convict him in these cases.

And finally why were these two "women panelists" called at the end targetting masculinity of men? Is it a norm for Netflix.

Watching crime documentaries often leaves me with an uneasy feeling and anxiety, but "Indian Predator: Beast of Bangalore" was particularly thought-provoking. The documentary explores the horrific case of a serial predator who terrorized Bangalore, highlighting the system's struggle to deliver swift and effective punishment. Just like the Nirbhaya case, this one dragged on for years despite overwhelming evidence. It raises serious questions about lengthy appeals processes and the true effectiveness of capital punishment. While some argue executions serve as a deterrent, the documentary leaves you wondering if they truly deliver justice, especially when victims are left with lifelong trauma. The carelessness of some police officers and the slow pace of the judiciary only add to the frustration. "The Beast of Bangalore" is a tough watch, but a necessary one, reminding us of the human cost of a flawed system.