Published Jun 03, 2026 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 03, 2026 | 7:00 AM
'Drishyam' lead actors with director Jeethu Joseph (extreme right). Credit: facebook.com/JeethuJosephOnline
Synopsis: The ‘Drishyam’ trilogy explores Georgekutty’s desperate bid to shield his family from powerful police forces, reflecting societal distrust of authority. Drawing parallels with real cases, the narrative highlights the dangers of “no body, no crime” myths and the psychological toll of evading justice. Ultimately, Georgekutty embodies a chilling truth: freedom from punishment can mean lifelong imprisonment of guilt.
I saw Drishyam 3 at the movies recently. Even Mohanlal rates the trilogy as unique in his extraordinary career.
The films revolve around an ordinary, self-made family caught in a conflict with the mighty Police establishment. It is a gripping story told with remarkable craftsmanship.
The mother of the victim—the central character Georgekutty’s principal antagonist—holds immense institutional power as an IG of Police. Georgekutty (Vijay Salgaonkar in the Hindi adaptation) hides a crime, not out of malice but out of his very rational fear that a middle-class family cannot entirely rely on the law taking its own course when such powerful forces are lined up on the other side. The local community too stands with Georgekutty’s family despite knowing that they may be hiding something. This telling collective silence reflects the shared societal distrust of state authority.
The IG and the police force are convinced that Georgekutty has committed the crime, but the lack of corpus delicti (body of the victim) and direct evidence stand in their way.
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It reminded me of a case that I had investigated as SP, Crime Branch, Kannur.
There was an old lady found murdered in her own house. Her gold ear studs and a gold chain were missing. To the cops, it looked like a murder for gain. By the time I took over the case, it was already around five years old. Before me, several other officers had investigated it. The case diaries of each of those investigations pointed towards the old lady’s son-in-law but solid evidence was not forthcoming. So they all wrote, ‘investigation continuing and kept till further evidence is obtained’.
I decided to look for any evidence that could point me in another direction. We collected all available evidence and questioned many people in the locality both in disguise and in our official uniforms. What we uncovered—particularly the efforts to create an alibi—again led us toward the son-in-law. But there was nothing conclusive. So, we decided to close the case as undetected.
My fellow officers who had toiled hard couldn’t hide their disappointment. I explained to my team that living with the guilt of the crime itself was going to be the son-in-law’s biggest punishment. As cops, arresting someone without being fully convinced of their guilt would have been unconscionable.
I also remember another murder-for-gain case from Kottayam District, which I supervised as the DIG, Crime.
A rich man living alone was murdered for gain. While reviewing the case, we found that the Assistant Sub Inspector, who had been handling the case, had manipulated the case diaries. We found sufficient evidence that led to the arrest of two youngsters from influential families. Nobody expected these young men to kill the old man with a cricket bat they used for playing at the nearby ground. The two men confessed and, for additional proof, the bat that was recovered had the old man’s blood on it.
We drew up the chargesheet. But I came to learn much later that the trial was conducted with the ‘help’ of some shady elements within the police to save the highly influential accused duo and the culprits were acquitted. In this case also, I believed that the ordeal itself could have transformed the accused. Had they gone scot-free, I fear they may have turned into hardened anti-socials.
Let us get back to Georgekutty. He is crafting a story to prove the innocence of his family. By the time Drishyam 2 arrived, Georgekutty had managed to escape arrest with his intelligent moves. However, the daughter is psychologically scarred.
In the second movie also, the director is successful in making the audience empathise with Georgekutty and his family. The movie saw the IG being torn between her duties and her desperate emotional instincts as a grieving mother. The police focus entirely on verifying the date when the crime was committed, demonstrating how easily human memory can be manipulated through repeated suggestions.
Altering public perception of a crime and creating community-backed alibis probably made some real-life criminals think they could also employ the same techniques to cover heinous crimes. Many accused, who had seen the movie, later confessed to cops that they thought that the Drishyam technique would help them evade the law.
In Drishyam 2, the police view the case as a professional embarrassment that must be corrected to preserve institutional authority. The police step up their surveillance, electronic monitoring and calculated psychological traps. The protagonist counters it by recognising that the police are bound by paperwork, procedures and chain of custody. In fact, he is creating a ‘script’ for his ‘story’.
Drishyam 3 is cut from a different cloth. The protagonist has climbed the social ladder and become a ‘rich man’, but his psychological vulnerability and ‘protective attitude’ towards his family have reached another level.
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The highly misleading part in the story is the police officer mentioning the lack of corpus delicti and stating that the dissolution of the skeleton in acid has caused the total loss of evidence. This is despite the protagonist sending a part of the victim’s mortal remains to the IG’s family to enable them to conduct last rites. ‘No body, no crime’ is a classic misconception that criminals across history have attempted to execute.
The infamous John George Haigh Case (1949) is an example. When questioned, Haigh bragged to the police that the victim’s remains no longer exist as he had destroyed it with acid. The forensic scientist examined the sludge that was left over and recovered human gall-bladder stones, a few pounds of human fat and a set of plastic dentures. The victim’s dentist identified the uniquely customised acrylic dentures.
In the Drishyam case too, the police could have focused on finding the dental pulp chamber that would have given them traces from the highly protected blood vessels and cellular DNA or mitochondrial DNA. But in the movie, the IG herself admits that despite there being circumstantial evidence of Georgekutty having purchased acid in bulk quantity, the police are at a loss to prove anything because there are no remains!
Can this false assertion encourage certain criminals to try this idea and dissolve the corpus delicti in the belief that the police won’t be able to solve such a case? I worry.
The depiction of the mother who resigned her job to start a new life in the USA but still craves to destroy the life of her son’s ‘murderer’ shows her highly pathological mentality. As a one-time senior police and woman, I found this difficult to accept.
Training and discipline usually take over. I believe it would have in this case and could not have lingered on for this long since the ex-IG knows her son tried to molest the protagonist’s daughter.
As for Georgekutty, who seems always on the verge of a mental breakdown, I can only offer an example from my policing days.
This involves a murderer who had committed the act to gain the money needed to get his wife discharged after delivery. He served his full term in jail and went on to lead a good life with his family without even an iota of grudge towards the cops who arrested him. (I was the Investigating Officer in that case in Attappadi many decades ago).
He, in fact, confessed to us after his release that he was thankful that we had brought him before the law as it relieved the burden of guilt he would have carried otherwise.
Drishyam is a chilling and gripping tale of criminal evasion. What happens when crime does not lead to punishment? The movie is a realistic case study of the permanent psychological imprisonment that follows when you get away with a ‘murder’. Georgekutty is condemned to a life in prison without bars.
(Views expressed are personal. Edited by R Rajesh Kumar)
