Netflix has debuted the first trailer for the upcoming true-crime documentary series Murder in a Courtroom. This is the third installment in the streamer’s Indian Predator series of non-fiction shows, which is looking to wrap up its run mere months after first starting out.
As with the previous two installments, Murder in a Courtroom also relies majorly on dramatic re-enactments. This time, the trailer doesn’t rely heavily on commentaries, barring a couple of moments where people discuss the ethics of what went down. Murder in a Courtroom is based on the vigilante killing of a suspected serial rapist named Bharat Kalicharan, aka Akku Yadav, in 2004.
Scores of women were said to have barged into a courtroom and murdered Yadav using sharp weapons and stones, as an act of vengeance for his decade-long spree of terror in a local slum. Yadav operated in the city of Nagpur, and had allegedly been ignored by the police deliberately, as he perpetrated numerous attacks against women without fear of consequences.
Hearing that Yadav could get bail again, a Guardian report recalled, the women decided to take the law into their own hands. Five women were immediately arrested after the lynching of Yadav, the report added, but they were let go after demonstrations across the city. “It was not a murder; it was social justice,” a report in The Telegraph quoted a social activist as saying in 2004.
The trailer recreates the scenes leading up to Yadav’s killing. Saree-clad women wielding knives are seen rushing toward him. One of them even appears to throw red chili powder in his eyes. “They ripped his ears off. They chopped his this and that,” one woman says in the trailer. “He was sharp, observant,” another woman says. A man who appears towards the end of the trailer remarks, “They reduced him to ground meat. That was the women’s doing. Are women capable of killing?” Others raise questions about the planning that must’ve gone into the act of violence.
The trailer also suggests that the series will explore mob psychology and vigilante justice. “It was an arranged, planned murder, which had something very fishy, which is still unexplored,” another man concludes.
When it was announced last year, Indian Predator was described as a “thrilling and suspenseful docu-series that attempts to decode the minds of some of India’s deadliest killers.” The first installment — Indian Predator: The Butcher of Delhi — was released in July. The second — Indian Predator: The Diary of a Serial Killer — was released in September. Murder in a Courtroom will be released on October 28. You can watch the trailer here, and read the official synopsis down below:
A criminal, Akku Yadav, was shockingly lynched in the middle of a packed courtroom by a group of women who claimed to be his victims. What was the truth behind this killing? Who was the real killer – the women, or Akku?
