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If you’re interested: click here for spoiler-free review of ‘Babita Singh Reporting’, an audio version is below.
Directed by Ambiecka Pandit and written by Amita Vyas, ‘Babita Singh Reporting’ follows Babita (Nimisha Sajayan), a police officer as she heads to visit her home-town Rewa and in-laws for the first time in two years. She is expected to help organize her sister-in-law’s baby shower. But when her childhood friend Bansi (Barun Sobti), is found dead the very next next after her arrival, she starts to investigate the case, because she believes the local police have arrested the wrong person for the murder.
Babita Singh Reporting Ending Explained
Bansi is known in the town for making Ravana effigies and is found dead near the grounds where the festive celebrations take place. A junkie is arrested for his murder, and the police even get a confession out of the man. However, when Babita visits the crime scene, she notices that Bansi’s external injuries indicate that he must’ve been attacked by someone left-handed, while the junkie is right-handed. But when she brings this to the local police’s notice, they couldn’t care less and are happy to close the case.
When Babita arrives in Rewa with her husband, Bansi comes to see her at the station, gifting her a beautiful pair of handcrafted earrings and asking if they can catch up later that evening. There’s something defeated about him as he admits that he doesn’t really have any friends left in town. But Babita is busy with her in-laws and can’t make time for him, texting that they can catch up the next day instead. Unfortunately, Bansi dies that very night, leaving Babita with the guilt of having missed what would turn out to be her last chance to talk to her old friend.
As Babita starts looking into the people who were last seen with Bansi, a bunch of suspicious individuals with potentially strong motives to kill him emerge. These are some of the primary suspects in Babita Singh Reporting:
- Inspector Bharadwaj, a local police official whose wife was Bansi’s crush/first love. She admits to meeting Bansi on the evening of his death and is visibly a victim of domestic abuse. She also reveals that Bansi had been financially helping her pay off her dowry. This naturally raises the possibility that Bharadwaj suspected them of having an affair and murdered Bansi. He certainly has enough clout to bury the case by pinning the crime on a false suspect.
- A relative whose car was seen tailing Bansi shortly before he was found dead. However, it turns out that he wasn’t driving the car that night, so suspicion quickly shifts to his driver.
- The driver, of course, becomes a suspect, but only for a few minutes. When Babita confronts him, the man quickly breaks down and confesses that he had plotted with Bansi’s older brother to rob him, knowing that his boss had recently made Bansi a hefty payment for his work. But when the two see Bansi hand over the money to Rupa and notice her cop husband approaching, the driver claims he scrammed from the spot, leaving Bansi’s brother behind.
- Bansi’s older brother, who had already been fighting with him over their property and had plotted to extract money from him. He confesses to blackmailing Bansi but breaks down in tears, saying he had no idea that would be the last time he’d see his brother alive. It certainly seems like he wasn’t the killer.
- Bansi’s wife Rupa, who is accused of mentally torturing him and is even seen in CCTV footage trying to set herself and their daughter on fire to intimidate and harass Bansi. She is also dead against Bansi sharing his property with his older brother.
In the end, it turns out that all these suspects are red herrings. Babita finally realizes that Bansi died inside the giant Ravana effigy he had built and climbs inside to look for clues.
Near the top of the effigy’s head, she discovers a piece of cloth from the clothes Bansi was wearing on the night he died. She finally puts the pieces together: Bansi jumped to his death. Voluntarily. The injuries that had initially convinced Babita he was attacked were actually caused by his body hitting and grazing against the scaffolding inside the effigy as he fell. And ‘Babita Singh Reporting’ makes his fate quite clear, not only by showing us Bansi’s final moments, but also through a subsequent news report revealing that the police have booked his wife and brother for abetment of suicide.
So Babita does solve her friend’s death and manages to save an innocent man from taking the fall for a murder that never happened. And even though the climax feels underwhelming, Bansi’s isolation and desperation are foreshadowed right at the beginning of Babita Singh Reporting. When he meets Babita, he clearly comes across as a man who doesn’t have anybody left to turn to. No friends. His wife hates him and even keeps their daughter away from him as a means of controlling him. His brother blackmails him. He’s slowly pushed to the edge.
And, of course, there’s the painful possibility that if Babita had shown up that evening and simply given her old friend a listening ear, perhaps Bansi wouldn’t have felt quite so isolated and alone in the world. It’s something Babita can never really know, but it gives her guilt, and her determination to find out what happened to him, a little more emotional weight in Babita Singh Reporting’s end.
Of course, Bansi isn’t perfect either, but that’s a character analysis for another day.
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