Murshid - Web Series Review

The Police force of India tries its best to reign in on the rowdies and the anti-social elements to ensure peace is upheld all the time. Though policing is a state-specific department, Indian Police Service (IPS) is governed through the Central Ministry, directly under the Ministry of Home. Some of the notorious goondas and culprits have largely arisen from specific cities.

And Mumbai is no exception. While one wouldn’t say the city tops (with the most number of such elements), the city’s crime scene has always been on top, especially for film makers.

Murshid is one such subject, depicting the behind the scenes of what happens in the lives of such rowdy elements.

Two men deployed by Farid (Zakir Hussain) are to exchange money for drugs with the men of an operator who has a Talibani background and is based in Dubai. While exchanging the “goods”, one of the men shoot 3 members of the other group and tries to escape with the booty – money and drugs while the other guy rushes to the office to inform his handler. 

The handler arrives at the spot of crime, kills his own guy sitting with the booty and manages to get away. While the handler’s men interrogate Junaid Pathan (Ashish Sharma) with third degree treatment, Farid arrives as the scene to identify that the man is the son of an erstwhile dreaded don, under whom he grew up. 

Murshid Pathan (Kay Kay Menon) was a dreaded gangster in the 1980s’ Mumbai and had under his control a large list of small time looters in town. His claim to face is notorious, as he approaches a fellow gangster with a request to let go of a hostage, who is the teenage daughter of a wealthy, diamond merchant. 

When the gangster refuses to let go of the hostage whom his son wishes to marry, Murshid kills him on the spot with a tea glass and hands over the reins to the henchman on duty. Murshid goes on to extort money from various persons and gains popularity. 

Several years later, when Murshid’s elder son is killed, he renounces his path of violence and gore to an ardent believer. So much so, that he stays away from his second son Junaid as well as Inspector Kumar Pratap (Tanuj Virwani). 

When he gets to know that his son Junaid is being tortured by Farid, who wants to give away the lad to the Talibans, Murshid takes the revolver once again in his hand, to save his son. 

Thereafter, it is a face-off between Murshid and Farid. 

When the incumbent Chief Minister’s son Jayendra Rao (Rajesh Shringarpure) enquires Farid about Murshid’s growing dominance in the “business”, Farid simply plays it down. However, Murshid is moving fast from strength to strength all the way up to joining the opposition party. 

Farid assures Jayendra of victory in the upcoming Legislative assembly elections, though the latter doubts the capabilities of the former, given the happenings. 

Meanwhile, Murshid meets Jayendra and discusses his possibilities of him gaining power and says curtly, that power is not bestowed on the coward. 

Does Jayendra become the next Chief Minister of Maharashtra? Does Farid survive Murshid? That’s the rest of the episodes. The script of the web series on the Zee 5 OTT App follows a standard procedure of how such gangster scripts are typically written. 

Director Shravan Tiwari, who has also written the story has gone wild with his imagination in places, with scenes which include the Police letting a criminal kill another with an official revolver, as well as another cop sharing official secrets blatantly with those outside the force. Shows them in poor light.

Cinematography by Badal Saxsena and Parvez Pathan takes us though the crowded streets of Mumbai, giving the viewer a real and rich view of the settings. Background Music by Kunal Karan is not as impactful as one would expect (though I watched most of the episodes using an earpod) while Kay Kay Menon has stunned us with his performance in every scene of his appearance.