There are some real stories and some fictional stories created by humans.

Humans are the creators of their own stories some play the role of altruistic heroes some play the role of narcissist heroes but in the end, we all are heroes in our stories.

Understanding such role play by one of the most famous web series in India THE ASUR   series caught everyone’s attention. A series that made to the top 10 IMDb rating list.

here we will understand why human brain is a cradle of crimes through forensics as well as psychological plots through the modern fictional drama, web series.

ASUR: Welcome to the DARK  Side !!!!!!!

A web series that blends science, technology, mythology, and psychology. It is India's first psychological mytho-thriller, directed by Gaurav Shukla. It’s main plot is based on child psychology, parental abuse, and injustice done to juveniles.

The series forays into India's mythological past and how it affects the psyche of tormented youth in the present day. But the most profound theme of asur is the dichotomy of good v/s evil.

Early in the first episode Riya ( a character in the series ) makes a statement “ there are no good people or bad people, just bad circumstances “ and later Asur toys with a similar hypothesis “evil is human, evil is nature “.

The series portrays “ two forensic experts trying to solve a serial killing while being in captivity'' .The mythology angle used gives it an Indian feel and the philosophy used in the writing process attracts the audience's attention undoubtedly.

There are three highly intelligent men in the story and the whole series revolves around these men, one of them being a serial killer committing a crime and the other two forensic experts trying to decode the mysteries.

Shubh (the serial killer ) whose back childhood life history as revealed in the series shows how poorly he has been treated by his father, he was blamed for his mother’s death for no reason, he was called asur , datiya , devil by his father and somehow all these had a deep-seated effect on his subconsciousness and had an impact on his psyche transforming him to be a criminal.

His psychological analysis done by a psychologist in the series shows that he had an exceptionally high IQ (149) had he been given the right direction and better environment he would have been some great man.

He had hyperlexia, a condition in which a child can read at levels far beyond those expected for their age. He used to mug up the books by just seeing the pages of a book. He also had a few Autistic symptoms.

Each episode of this series has the power to keep us hooked with a high point leaving us wanting more and more. It’s a unique cocktail of forensic science, Indian mythology, and psychology.

The series has a lot to be discussed but since the topic of this paper restricts me to the forensic and psychological aspects only.  Let’s discuss only the forensic and psychological aspects.

Below I have mentioned the story of each episode with a psychological and forensic viewpoint.

Episode 1: The Dead Can Talk

The episode starts with an 11 yr old story Varanasi, Gaurav Shukla has very wisely selected the main location of the plots, since he has used mythology as a tool to attract.  the audience so accordingly, he selected Varanasi as the main location because of the mythological significance of that place.

Further in the episode a young child named Shubh is seen performing rituals alongside his father and a person.

His father while returning in a boat with his son , drowns in the river and dies. Shubh is shown to express no emotions nor any feeling of guilt or sorrow.

He is also seen drowning a mug in the same river at the same time when his father drowned. It was the same jar in which he served water for his father.

This scene makes the audience suspect that shubh is the one who poisoned his father and his father died of poisoning not because of drowning and this is so very true as revealed in further episodes.

In the next scene, the story moves on to the present where a forensic expert ( Barun Sobti as Nikhil Nair ) is shown teaching at FBI HQ.

There while teaching he mentions the statement “ the dead can talk  “ which means dead bodies help investigators to reach the culprit,the marks, evidence found on their body and surroundings help us reach the culprit.

Nikhil Nair is shown to receive some coordinates of an unknown location from a mysterious source, the locations he used to send were from India.

Multiple crimes were taking place at those locations. Meanwhile, CBI finds a completely mutilated, tortured, and charred body.CBI suspects a serial killer because of the peculiar mask and modus of Operandi they find at the crime scene.

Crime scene shows that the way the victim was treated, it would have been done by someone having psychotic issues or by someone who is not sane. It was a completely inhuman act.

The body was hanged like a crowscape it hardly had any skin left all that was seen was a skeleton, mutilated body.

The forensic team firstly protected the crime scene using yellow tape, collected the leftover remains from the crime scene, scraped off the dried blood from nearby bricks and stones.

They collected the trace evidence using forceps. At the same time, the writer introduces the third intelligent man of the series Dhananjay Rajpoot, a forensic expert set on a wild chase.  

The crime scene we see was an open crime scene and a secondary crime scene.

Episode 2: Rabbit Hole

The episode starts with a  story set 18 years ago .where young Shubh is seen as cold, ruthless, and cruel.

His father is seen calling him a devil. In the present Nikhil returns to CBI meets his coworkers. towards the end of the episode, DJ receives an envelope containing a Pendrive.

Pendrive holds a video that reveals that the charred body was that of Sandhya, DJ’s wife. DJ  notices the killer had a tattoo  of the Naga tribe   

The investigation takes a wild turn when Nusrat ( forensic expert )  using facial recognition techniques finds out that the mutilated body was of none other than Sandhya, Dhananjay’s wife. 

Being directly related to the murder, DJ can’t handle the case anymore. Moreover, all the circumstantial evidence points out DJ to be the culprit later on the killer kills a person in Nagaland leaving his symbolic mask and right index finger cut again.

The fingerprints recovered from the crime scene match those of Dhananjay and he is put behind the bars.

The video shows how the killer murdered Sandhaya he smashed her head, dragged her, pulled her hair, and finally he threw the girl’s head in the microwave, pressing her head against the door of the microwave.

He took the body to open ground and threw pieces of meat to attract dogs. And unfortunately, dogs performed the autopsy.  

All this shows the culprit was a very clever and intelligent person he cleverly left only the evidence which he wanted to use as a trap for the investigation team.

Episode 3: Peek a Boo

The series goes back to 18 yrs old again, where Shubh’s grandfather takes him to a psychologist and it is revealed that Shubh has autistic symptoms and is deeply affected by his father’s tortuous behavior towards him.

At the psychologist’s office, Shubh breaks the right index finger of a skeleton remembering his father’s behavior.

His father always used to use his right index finger will scolding him. In one of the scenes, we see that Shubh sets a live dog on fire in anger.

Such acts as seen through research are psychopathic symptoms and show clearly that  Shubh was not in a mentally sound condition and his father’s behavior was affecting him a lot.

Meanwhile, the scene changes and we come back to the present again, where we see that Nikhil gets 3 more coordinates from the same mysterious source. He notices that the killer has no pattern as such for choosing the victims, he chooses random people at random locations

Throughout the series, the writer wants to show how parental abuse and maltreatment in childhood can affect later life. He is basically trying to explain the social theory of crime. How imbalanced childhood life can result in converting a person to a criminal.

Episode 4: ASHES from Past

Nikhil sets on to find about 3 more coordinates one in Kolkata, where they get a body in a car, forensic team gets no weapon but to know that the killer had played smart and tampered the exhaust pipeline. 

The dead body found at the crime scene had no marks as such.

The second coordinate was that of a graveyard in Gurugram, giving the CBI a tough task to find the murdered body,  it was like finding something in a bucket of waste. 3rd was in a  coffin shop in New Delhi, all this gives Nikhil a few hints and he is successful in finding out the killer’s location, but an automated tranquilizer attack results in the killer successfully capturing Nikhil in captivity.

 At the beginning of episode 4 it is revealed that 11yrs ago Shubh was put behind the bars by DJ  as he was suspicious that he had poisoned his father.

Episode 5: The Devil has a Face

Killer threatens Nikhil for his family and he is forcefully made to tell the most appropriate way to kill, killer’s next prey a neuroscientist. Nikhil suggests replacing her platinum tooth cap with an iron tooth cap so that when she would check the apparatus before performing her experimentation it would create a bullet effect.

Meanwhile, Dhananjay is tasked by the CBI to work on the case while in prison. During working on the case he meets, Kesar Bharadwaj, a motivational speaker on spiritualism. Naina ( Nikhil’s wife) arrives with her daughter to find about Nikhil and she gets to know that he is missing.

DJ sends his colleague to Banaras to inquire about Shubh when Kesar figures out that Dhananjay’s past may have something related to all that was happening.And also Dhananjay gets a mysterious clue and realizes that Nikhil is alive and has contributed to the murder.  

Episode 6: The Firewall

Lolarak ( DJ’s colleague ) inquires with the police officer. the police officer tells him that Shubh used to draw many pictures of asuras and read many scriptures. He used to preach about evil and good and many had wilfully joined him as followers.

Prison authorities also revealed that when Shubh was in prison there was a massive fire in prison because of which

He had either escaped or died.  When Loarak went to meet Shubh’s grandfather he came to know that Shubh was born on the day of devilish’s birth and his father wanter wanted him to be born on the day god are born, also his mother died after giving birth to him.

This is why Shubh was called devilish by his father and this hate motivated him to poison his father.

In the present, Nikhil is given another victim, Aditya Jalan, a famous businessman who generously wishes to donate a major share of his property to charity. Kesar helps Dhananjay by reading the horoscopes of all the victims and finds out they belong to a specific Hindu zodiac sign.

Dhananjay, with help from Naina, is able to hack into the firewall of NIC, which gives the date, place, and time of birth of people. From this, Dhananjay realizes that the next victim is Jalan.

While Dhananjay gets a call from the killer saying that he knows he's trying to save Jalan from getting killed, this causes Dhananjay to convince Jalan to cancel his engagement, but Jalan rebuffs the warning. Dhananjay then enhances the security arrangements; realizing this, Nikhil plans a counterplot, though another counterplot is initiated by Dhananjay.

Nikhil, however, finds another counterplot, which ultimately results in Jalan being killed the same way during the engagement party.

Episode 7: Let There be Darkness

Dhananjay, aggrieved at his failure to save Jalan, seeks Kesar's help again and finds out that the victims were born under a certain star.

Knowing that the killer could very well come after him, Dhananjay stakes himself and asks Naina to manipulate the NIC database in order to get the killer to promptly plan his murder. Initially reluctant, Naina agrees.

She receives a connected call from Nikhil and is relieved to find out he is alive, but the kidnapper cuts the call short. Parallel to this, a flashback shows that Nikhil met Shubh in prison and promised him that he would help him.

Shubh responds by assuring him that he will be back. Nikhil gets a hint of his kidnapper and realizes that it may be Shubh, but he is unable to speak to him at all.

Until now we had no clue how the killer was selecting his victims, on what basis but now we realize that the killer’s mindset was very much affected by Indian mythology and he used certain kind of zodiac signs and stars to select his victims.

All this reveals that he had a good knowledge of Indian mythology.

Episode 8: End is the Beginning

This is the climax episode. Many suspects come up in this episode and still, none is yet confirmed. who is the real asur?

10 years earlier, Nikhil finds out that DJ had framed the evidence to send Shubh to prison, which is the reason why Nikhil resigned from the CBI.

At present, Nikhil is assigned DJ as the next victim and tells the killer that he has to go to jail to kill him since the central jail has high surveillance. The killer gets into the jail and as per plotted, reaches DJ and is about to kill him, but gets tied up by DJ instead.

Since the killer is in jail, Nikhil finds a way to get out of jail. There, the killer reveals there are many Shubhs and not one, prompting DJ to conclude that Kesar is the mastermind who murdered his wife.

 Additionally, a female journalist, a Hindu preacher, and an Islamic preacher are locked in a chamber where they have only 12 hours of oxygen supply available. Naina has, meanwhile, left Ria to the care of a househelp.

Meanwhile, Lolark spots a deep scar on Rasool's hand, and along the highway, he questions Rasool again, but Rasool, in turn, has his college friends speak to Lolark about him, which somewhat convinces Lolark.

By this time, Nikhil manages to escape the killer's custody by mapping his fingerprints using paracetamol on a water tumbler and putting them in the biometric machine but is unable to do anything to save the captives.

The Islamic preacher tries to convince the Hindu Preacher to kill the female journalist, but the Hindu Preacher disagrees, in response to which the Islamic preacher tries to strangle the Hindu Preacher to death, even as the female journalist comes forward to stop them both from killing each other.

Lolark and Rasool successfully discover the killer's hideout, when Lolark stumbles upon a notebook in Rasool's bag and finds out that the drawings in his notebook are the same as what Shubh's grandfather gave him.

Rasool reveals that he is actually Shubh in disguise and that he is the commander of a spiritual cult where multiple people follow his preachings, Kesar turning out to be one of them.

Kesar, upon being confronted, makes DJ confess what he did with the evidence against Shubh and compels him to self-harm, in return for telling the location of the journalist and the preachers.

Eventually, it is revealed in a flashback that Kesar is actually Shubh's first disciple, the wilful one who joined him in prison. Shubh ties up Lolark after attacking him brutally and contacts Nikhil when he reunites with Naina upon discovering the location of the captives.

DJ collapses after consuming the tablets offered to him by Kesar, which increased his heartbeat and blood pressure significantly, but Nushrat and the officers are able to rescue him.

With time running out, Shubh offers Nikhil on phone the option of choosing between Ria and the captives, and Nikhil, exasperated, sacrifices Ria, who is revealed to have died through the househelp, revealed to be one of Shubh's followers, who spiked the food she was eating.

He then shoots Lolark dead. However, the female journalist suddenly grabs a pistol from one of the lady officers and shoots the Islamic preacher dead.

DJ's revelation spews another rivalry between Nikhil and DJ since it was DJ's mistake 10 years ago that led to all these killings and thus, Ria's death, in the form of revenge. Finally, the camera pans out as Shubh has one last stare at DJ, hinting at an unfinished business, i.e. an upcoming season.

Here killer has played multiple games, he wants to explain that there are no good people or no bad people, it’s just the situations that make people commit crimes he has purposely kept the Hindu preacher, the female journalist, and an Islamic preacher in a chamber with limited oxygen supply to show that man does commit a crime when they are in such a situation where committing a crime is the only way of escape.

It is not the devil inside but the situation, the environment outside. He basically wants to explain that 10 yrs back when he poisoned his father, he had no other way to escape from his torturous life.

Moreover despite being a juvenile Dhananjay sent  Shubh to prison. Shubh had psychological issues his place was in a correction home and not in the prison above all to prove Shubh guilty he had fabricated evidence there wasn’t any real evidence found that proved Shubh poisoned his father.

Disclaimer- The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author.  These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of SIFS India and/or any contributors to this website. SIFS India has no liability in the case of controversy.

Source

https://thecinemaholic.com/asur-voot/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asur_(web_series)

indianexpress.com

Written by: Megha Aggarwal