Written and directed by Sandhya Suri, Santosh is the United Kingdom entry in the Academy Awards. However, it takes place in India and the characters speak Hindi.
As the film opens, Santosh Saini (Shahana Goswami) is forced to deal with the fact that her police constable husband, like Santosh a Hindu, has been killed during a riot when he is hit by a rock thrown by a young Muslim man. As an older (like 30 years old) childless widow, Santosh discovers that neither her family nor her husband’s family want to take care of her. The police authorities inform her that she will lose her comfortable government-supplied home and her husband’s pension. However, there is a solution. If Santosh takes over her husband’s job as a police constable, she can keep the home and assume his salary. She agrees without hesitation.
On duty, Santosh encounters a man who is traumatized by the disappearance of his 14- or 15-year-old daughter, Devika. Santosh brings him to the police station. But the police officers have no interest in the case because the man and his daughter are poor Dalits, known in the rest of the world as Untouchables. The police refuse to even file a report. A few days later, Devika’s body is found in the well the Dalits use for drinking water. Under pressure, the police announce an investigation to be led by the only experienced female constable, Inspector Geeta Sharma (Sunita Rajwar). Santosh is assigned to be her assistant. Geeta soon becomes Santosh’s mentor.
After the well is cleaned, it is again polluted when someone throws in a dead rat. The locals believe this is being done by upper-caste men. But when Santosh and Geeta gain access to Davika’s cell phone, they discover she has been exchanging flirtatious messages with a young Muslim man who has fled. Upset by the grieving of the Dalits, and given that her husband was killed by a Muslim, Santosh becomes obsessed with tracking down the presumed killer. When she does find him, she is hailed as a hero.
But then the case becomes a lot more complicated. As Geeta explains to Santosh, “There are two types of untouchables in this country. The ones people don’t want to touch…and the others who can’t be touched.”
Santosh is being pitched as a film about female empowerment, but that is just part of its message. It is also about truth, corruption, personal prejudice and class inequality.
