'Raid': A powerful film on combating corruption (Film Review)
By Subhash K Jha
Film: "Raid"; Starring: Ajay Devgan, Saurabh Shukla; Director: Raj Kumar Gupta; Rating: **** (4 stars)
Just when you think the Bollywood thriller is running out of steam there comes "Raid", a film so taut and clenched, so caustic and brimming with political sarcasm that you wonder where was director Raj Kumar Gupta hiding himself for so many years?
So yes he made "Ghanchakkar". We all make mistakes, okay? Not that I minded Gupta's unexpected swing into zany comedy. But smartly-spun, tautly-narrated political thrillers are his forte. "Aamir" and "No One Killed Jessica" had proved it. "Raid" proves it again.
So welcome back, Mr Gupta. Here's your deal. An honest-to-goodness income tax officer, played with incorruptible smoothness by Ajay Devgn, who gives away nothing (at least, nothing that we can see on his face) is pitched against a burly swarmy corrupt seedy politician in the hotbed of Lucknow's politics.
What happens when Amay Patnaik (Devgn) takes on Rameshwar Singh (Saurabh Shukla) on the latter's home turf? Strongly imbued in the spirit of social reform, the Idealistic Bureaucrat as revisited in this film, is a bit of an anomaly. Devgn's Amay fights that very system which has created him. Idealistic heroes tend to come across as single-minded implacable determined bullies. Devgan is all of this. It is remarkable how willingly he lets Saurabh Shukla chew up every scene in which they're together.
Editor Bodhaditya Banerjee slicesA across the large canvas of characters to capture people in their most anxious moments. It's a narrative of tremendous tension and nervous anxieties but never surrendering to a frenzied cutting-away of the material to play on the urgency of the moment.
It's done in the spirit of a pre-determined moral battle, a raider's Ramayan so to speak, that the plot so doggedly takes on in the pursuit of a Good versus Bad morality tale where the winner often appears to be a loser because he is so one-note in his determined idealism.
Saurabh Shukla has all the fun. And Devgan lets him. It is this spirit of passive resistance that the narrative so virilely assumes that makes "Raid" a riveting watch. The more Devgan's goodness shines down on the plot, the more Shukla's decadent corruption showers its reeking beneficence down on the plot that ironically gets its sustenance not from Devgan's Rama-like heroism but Shukla's Ravan-esqe rhetorics.
While Devgan and his raiders of the lost assets pool their talents to create a moribund army of wealth retrievers, the film's fuel surcharge comes from the heated exchanges between the bureaucratic hero and the political renegade. The two actors play against one other with brilliant brio.
The supporting cast is largely credible and sometimes remarkably engaging (Shukla's antiquated yet alert mother is a howl). But Ileana D'Cruz brought in for the sake of romantic glamour sticks out like a sore thumb with her patently Lakhnavi chikan-attired performance. Not her fault, though. What can she do when the plot is almost uniformly focused on its frenetic fight against wealth stealth with loads of savage humour and unexpected pauses to consider what makes corruption such a thriving industry in our country.
By the time the raid on Rajaji's ill-gotten wealth is over, the director has made a darkly humorous telling point on what it takes to call a dishonest politician dishonest.
Your job, perhaps. But hell, someone has to do the dirty job before another Jessica is killed randomly by a wealthy wayward reveler in a bar. Don't miss "Raid". One of its many pleasures is to watch the two principal actors in full control of their characters, even as the director guiding their exchanges, stands back to let the plot grow hot without burning itself out.
It takes a lot of will-power to stand back and let the corrupt steal the thunder from the incorruptible. "Raid" tells us virtuosity may be boring. But it is still a rare bird worth capturing in the palm of your hand.
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HC questions Delhi govt over failure to regulate sale of old vehicles, refers to Red Fort blast
New Delhi (PTI): The Delhi High Court questioned the city government on Wednesday over its failure to regulate the sale and transfer of used vehicles, while pointing out that in a recent bomb blast near the Red Fort, a second-hand car was used, making the issue more significant.
A bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela asked the Delhi government to file a detailed response on the issue of regulating authorised dealers of registered vehicles.
"A car changes four hands but the original owner has not changed. Therefore, what happens? That man (the original owner) goes to the slaughterhouse? What is this? How are you permitting this? You will take a call when two-three more bomb blasts take place?" the bench asked the Delhi government's counsel.
The bomb blast near the iconic Mughal-era monument was carried out using a second-hand car, making the issue even more significant, it said.
The court listed the matter for further hearing in January 2026.
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The court was hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) plea filed by an organisation, Towards Happy Earth Foundation, highlighting the challenges in the implementation of rules 55A to 55H of the Central Motor Vehicles Rules, introduced in December 2022 to regulate authorised dealers of registered vehicles.
While the rules were intended to bring accountability to the second-hand vehicle market, the petitioner's counsel argued that they have failed in practice due to regulatory gaps and procedural hurdles.
The plea said there is a major gap in the amended framework, that is, the absence of any statutory mechanism for reporting dealer-to-dealer transfers.
"In reality, most used vehicles pass through multiple dealers before reaching the final buyer, but the rules recognise only the first transfer to the initial authorised dealer.
"As a result, the chain of custody breaks after the first step, defeating the very purpose of accountability," the petition said.
It added that because of these gaps, only a very small percentage of dealers across India have been able to obtain authorised dealer registration and in Delhi, not a single dealer has got it.
Consequently, lakhs of vehicles continue to circulate without any record of who is actually in possession of those, it said.
The plea said only a small fraction of India's estimated 30,000 to 40,000 used-vehicle dealers are registered under the authorised-dealer framework.
The petition also pointed out that the 11-year-old vehicle used in the November 10 bomb blast near the Red Fort was sold several times but was still registered in its original owner's name.
The blast near the Red Fort had claimed 15 lives.
