
In 1995, boxes of weapons drop out of the skies over Purulia in Bengal. Not every one of the containers returns to the government’s vault. Some of them are hidden, waiting for the highest bidder.
In the present, the debt-laden siblings Latika (Tanya Maniktala) and Palash (Sahil Mehta) decide to rob banks – in the plural. Loot Kaand is overloaded at all times, drawing dizzying connections between the Purulia arms drop and the efforts of Latika and Palash to act like ace criminals.
The six-episode Hindi series created by Saurav Dey and directed by Ruchir Arun is out on Amazon MX Player. The script, by Arun, Aman Mannan and Ritu Shri, is shamelessly convoluted, superbusy and stuffed with enough spice to justify its leaps of imagination.
Each of the principal characters has a back story and a problem in the present. Latika is trying to save the family’s ancestral home. Palash has been fired for stealing. Their paths intersect with the school teacher Pinaki (Gyanendra Tripathi), a mystery man with a talent for puzzle solving.
Gangster Burman (Brij Bhushan Shukla) and his wife Paro (Ronjini Chakraborty) badly want to lay their hands on the Purulia stash. Police officer Saket (Nitin NS Goel) and his colleague Mithu (Prashansa Sharma) set out to investigate the links between the hidden guns, the bank robberies and a missing girl.
When did Purulia get so exciting, Saket wonders. Purulia turns out to be tiny too, with everybody running into each within what appears to be a 5-km radius.
However, despite being set in a city in Bengal, the show has barely any local flavour. We might well be in the badlands of Uttar Pradesh, where crime is waiting to happen and everything goes belly-up because it must. Loot Kaand merrily gallops from one twist to the next, hoping that nobody will notice how contrived it is.
The series has engaging turns by its leads. Tanya Maniktala and Sahil Mehta – her Latika the older and wiser sister, his Palash foolish and reckless at times – are a well-matched pair. Director Ruchir Arun distributes the scenes equally between the other characters, with Gyanendra Tripathi especially memorable as the teacher with a secret connection to the whole shebang.
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