Raat Akeli Hai

Raat Akeli Hai
Netflix release poster
Directed by	Honey Trehan
Written by	Smita Singh
Produced by	Abhishek Chaubey Ronnie Screwvala
Starring	Nawazuddin Siddiqui Radhika Apte Shweta Tripathi Aditya Srivastava Tigmanshu Dhulia Gyanendra Tripathi Shivani Raghuvanshi Nitesh Kumar
Cinematography	Pankaj Kumar
Edited by	A. Sreekar Prasad
Music by	Sneha Khanwalkar
Production company	RSVP Movies
Distributed by	Netflix
Release date	31 July 2020 (2020-07-31)
Running time	150 minutes
Country	India
Language	Hindi

Raat Akeli Hai (The Night Is Lonely) is a 2020 Indian Hindi-language crime drama film directed by Honey Trehan. Starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Radhika Apte, Shweta Tripathi, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Shivani Raghuvanshi, Nishant Dahiya, Gyanendra Tripathi, Ila Arun, Swanand Kirkire, Nitesh Kumar Tiwari and Aditya Srivastava, the film follows a small town cop who is summoned to investigate the death of a elderly family member. Produced by Abhishek Chaubey and Ronnie Screwvala, Raat Akeli Hai was released on Netflix on 31 July 2020.

Plot

The film starts with a car being followed by a truck and truck hits the car and kills both the driver and the lady. Killer takes the bodies to a factory and burns them with the acid but accidentally acid got spilled on his hand.

Five years Later, Inspector Jatil Yadav after attending the wedding of his colleague Narendra Singh gets called up by the SSP to investigate a murder of Raghuveer Singh who gets murdered by his own gun on his wedding night. He is introduced to family by Ramesh Chauhan, brother of Raghuveer Singh's first wife. Members of the family are Karuna Singh Daughter of Raghuveer Singh, Karan son of Raghuveer Singh, Chunni maid of the house, Pramila Singh wife of Raghuveer Singh's Brother, Vasudha and Vikram daughter and son of Pramila, Ravi Sisodia husband of Karuna and Radha wife of Raghuveer Singh. Starting Interrogation Vikram told he was the first one to see the dead body, he went to drop his fiancee daughter of MLA Munna Raja around 9:30 and came back around 11:15 and then went with family to temple at 12:30 after which he saw his uncle dead, there was baraat crossing in-front of the house at 10:30. He also found about back stairs which connects directly to water tank, During investigation with Radha, she remembers something and gives the chit to Chunni who gives it to Jatil, on chit the address of Radha is written and he remembers that he saved Radha five years earlier, when she attempted suicide on a train. Further during investigation he finds that Raghuveer's first wife was killed during robbery when she was coming back from Gwalior, his son Karan has also been apprehended with drugs once.

Next Day, during investigation, Jatil finds the erotic magazines in Raghuveer's cupboard and some photos of women and plastic bead below the bed. He also finds that Radha was sold by her father and one of the photos is of Radha which he found earlier. Radha further refrains from telling anything to him. Later, Munna Raja comes in after Ravi calls him. Jatil also sees an old lady who was earlier a maid of house and her son was driver when Raghuveer's first wife was returning from Gwalior and she is grandmother of Chunni. Forensics tell them he was murdered between 10 and 12 with his own gun and blunt marks were due to because he was hit by butt of the gun.Phone records show that Vikram received phone call from his uncle at 11:30 and many phone calls from an unknown number which is of Radha. No fingerprints were found on gun as well as from the Raghuveer's phone. During interrogation with Chunni he finds she was the one who took the lamp up to Raghuveer's room and came back with the lamp which broke down on the stairs. She also refrains from telling anything but she tells he couldn't even see her father who died in that road accident and case got closed. Jatil starts investigating the death of Raghuveer's first wife and her driver, and finds that another city's police had reported a similar car and it was filed as hit and run case, leading him to tannery in Jajmau; which is run by a butcher but originally owned by Munna Raja.

Further investigation with family reveals that Karuna doesn't like her aunt and her cousin's interference and later Jatil finds a medical report and in the morning Chunni is found dead near the back stairs. He later fights with Narendra his colleague and openly tells the SSP that he will find the truth. Later he is attacked by the goons and calls Narendra for help but he ignores him but he tells him that he is going to arrest Radha, he immediately informs Radha to run but before she can run away Ravi chases her and she locks herself in a room but Jatil comes in time to take her away but goons continue to chase them, they catch the train and unknown to them one of the goons also catches the train. later in the night Radha wakes up to see Jatil missing she takes her knife with her, she finds Jatil being attacked by the Butcher working for Munna Raja, Both overpower him to throw him out of the train. they both reach Raghuveer's Gwalior farmhouse. During this Narendra singh is investigating the murder of Chunni and forensics tells him about the dead skin found in her fingernails leading to man with burnt skin, he makes the report and goes to SSP but he sees the man having fingernail marks on burnt hand in the office of SSP with Munna Raja. He goes to Chunni's grandmother and shows her the photo of the man. Also he informs him about all of this to Jatil, but in the mean time he finds a dupatta in Radha's bag having the same bead he found earlier, he confronts her that she was in fact in the room and she lied, she confesses that she and vikram had an affair and planned to elope with Vikram but he didn't as he was getting married to MLA's daughter, seeing this she got furious and called vikram to come and talk, he went back as soon he dropped his fiancee and parked the card and without anyone noticing took the back stairs and confronted Radha. As she going to enter the room to tell Raghuveer about the affair, lights went out, she tells the truth and Chunni comes upstairs with the lamp, as electricity comes back they all find Raghuveer already dead, Vikram tells her to go downstairs and meanwhile Vikram tells Chunni to call on his cell from Raghuveer's phone. After this while coming back she drops the lamp on the stairs and Vikram takes the backstairs and by main gate he asks the women to come to go for the temple.Later Jatil calls SSP that he has made Radha surrender in another police station.

He opens the medical report and finds the medical report under the name of Raghuveer's 1st wife and report was of abortion, and abortion was done one day before the accident. He enquires about it from her brother Ramesh who tells him that she was here with him as Karan caught Malaria but left all of a sudden to kanpur but when he asked on the phone he told he heard horns of the train but contradicting to this she was travelling by car. He also enquired the caretaker of the farmhouse who told that she ordered him to call whenever Raghuveer came with another woman. Investigating the farmhouse he finds the same erotic magazines, polaroid photos, polaroid camera and a badge of a boarding school. He visits the abortion clinic as well and watches the wedding video too. He comes to know that Radha is being taken by police under the bridge on the orders of SSP. As Radha is being taken by Narendra Singh under the bridge the same van comes who were chasing Jatil with the butcher in it, he comes out and inspects the van as he opens the van to take out Radha, Jatil who all along was accompanying her come out and attack resulting in cross-firing in which Radha gets injured but butcher escapes, as soon as butcher reaches his home Chunni's grandmother comes from back and throws oil onto him and burns him alive.

In the climax, Radha comes with Jatil in the bungalow with everyone present he starts to tell the truth, He confronts Ravi first that he is one who gave drugs to Karan and later school caught him and Raghuveer bailed him out. It was in fact butcher who killed both Raghuveer's first wife and driver and burnt the bodies in the tannery on the orders of Munna Raja, she came to know about a woman Raghuveer brought in the farmhouse by the caretaker which came out to be Vasudha, Pramila's daughter. She was sexually abused many times by her uncle and expelled from school. On 16th Chunni filed a missing report for her father which later got closed and It was Vasudha who killed her uncle because she confronted him with the truth but he dismissed her claims but in rage she takes out the gun and kills him, later she took out her dupatta and put it in the Radha's bag and changed it which was noticed by Jatil in the wedding video. Mrs Raghuveer called Pramila and told the truth to her and she was going to go back to her brother's home but she asked her to come to back Kanpur by Pramila and in mean time Pramila called Munna Raja and told him to kill Mrs Raghuveer as she was afraid Mrs Raghuveer will take them out of their property and Munna Raja bought Radha from his father for Raghuveer for his sexual desires. She then forgives Raghuveer for everything. After being confronted with truth Pramila kills herself, during cremation Vasudha tells Jatil the truth.

Jatil goes back to his normal life. He catches up with Radha's train and asks her to spend her life with him, which she happily accepts.

Cast

• Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Inspector Jatil Yadav
• Radhika Apte as Radha
• Shweta Tripathi as Karuna Singh
• Tigmanshu Dhulia as SSP Lalji Shukla
• Shivani Raghuvanshi as Vasudha Singh
• Aditya Srivastava as Munna Raja
• Nishant Dahiya as Vikram Singh
• Padmavati Rao as Pramila Singh
• Ila Arun as Sarita Kumari, Jatil's mother
• Swanand Kirkire as Ramesh Chauhan
• Shree Dhar Dubey as Narendra Singh/ Nandu
• Nitesh Kumar as Karan
• Khalid Tyabji as Raghuveer Singh
• Riya Shukla as Chunni

Production

The film was shot mostly in Lucknow and Kanpur of Uttar Pradesh on real locations. In Kanpur the unit shot in Jajmau, Kotwali and Bithoor while in Lucknow it was shot in Qaiserbagh police station, bus stand and Malihabad.

Reception

Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV gave four stars out of five & said, "The film does to the crime and punishment genre what Bulbbul did to the supernatural revenge fantasy - lifts it many notches above the ordinary." Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave three stars out of five & said, "A few of the bits and pieces in Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai feel a bit contrived, but not enough to take the enjoyment away from a film which has a terrific sense of time and place, and a crime in which everyone has stakes." Komal Nahta of Film Information said, "It's a well-made and well-enacted whodunit. However, the last about half an hour seems rather implausible and, therefore, is not as exciting as it should’ve been." Rohan Naahar of Hindustan Times said, "Raat Akeli Hai is quite the achievement. Trehan not only has a skill for directing actors, but also displays a command over tone and visual texture."

External links

• Raat Akeli Hai at IMDb
• Raat Akeli Hai on Bollywood Hungama