Hunkkaar: The Roar Review: A Young Woman’s Account Against a Godman’s Authority

Meenu Rawat has to tell the police what happened to her, then tell them again. Interruptions break the recording of her statement, forcing the 17-year-old to return to details she has already struggled to say aloud. Her father leaves partway through; her mother is overcome.

The camera stays close to Meenu’s face, giving the repeated account a weight that a brisk procedural scene might have passed over. Aneet Padda plays her without asking for easy sympathy. Meenu is frightened, impatient and determined to finish speaking.

The investigation offers little relief once she has spoken. A doctor doubts her account on the basis of the examination, while the room where Meenu says the assault took place has been cleaned and altered. ACP Jasleen, played with guarded composure by Fatima Sana Shaikh, must work with evidence that powerful people can dispute or erase. Hunkkaar: The Roar is at its sharpest in these early scenes, when the effort required to report an assault is itself part of the drama.

The accused is Sunil “Baapji” Chakosi (Raghubir Yadav), a spiritual leader whose influence reaches through Meenu’s school and across their town in Madhya Pradesh. The series gives him room to demonstrate how that influence works. He publicly embraces a lower-caste follower, presenting himself as a man above social divisions.

Later, he invites journalists to question him before his devotees, whose cheers meet his answers about fear, truth and faith. The welcome looks open, but Baapji controls the setting and has a crowd ready to affirm him. Yadav resists the obvious menace that might have made these scenes simpler. His mildness helps explain why followers grant him authority, even as his command of the room grows unsettling.

That attention to public performance distinguishes the series from a straightforward investigation. When the police commissioner resists an arrest warrant, he invokes the feelings of Baapji’s followers. At Meenu’s school, classmates and staff speak against her. A video of her eating a snack in public circulates as supposed evidence that she cannot be telling the truth.

Nothing about the snack bears on her allegation, which is precisely why its use is so revealing: ordinary behaviour becomes material for judging a girl who has already been asked to repeat her account under scrutiny. Her father fears the consequences of confronting Baapji, while her mother objects when he tries to confine Meenu to the house. The argument reaches into family life before a mob brings danger to their door.

For viewers outside India, the label godman may suggest that Baapji’s power lies solely in religious devotion. Hunkkaar shows something more concrete in Kharganj: he runs the institution Meenu attended, can gather supporters in public, and receives deference from officials concerned about their reaction. His appearance of generosity and the threat carried by his followers occupy the same story. The series need not explain every aspect of that culture to make the local balance of power legible.

Its difficulty comes as the case expands. Jasleen’s investigation, Amitabh Sinha’s television reporting and the later courtroom proceedings offer ways to examine the institutions around Meenu. Some work better than others. Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub gives Bhalerao, the local lawyer who takes up her case, an earnestness that lends the courtroom scenes energy.

Jasleen’s restraint also has force when she is facing resistance from above. She is told that officials gave her the case expecting her to fail, a striking indication of how little support her assignment carries. The series raises that pressure but does not develop it as fully as the early police station scenes suggest it could.

Amitabh, played by Arjun Mathur, has an equally promising position. His broadcast draws attention to the allegation, and Baapji’s invitation to the press puts him inside a carefully managed public event. Yet his repeated movement between newsroom and town often advances the case without giving his own choices much dramatic weight.

Other additions, including Baapji’s son and a boy Meenu befriends at her new school, further divide the middle stretch. Leaving Meenu’s immediate perspective lets the series show how many people can shape what happens to her. Too often, though, a new thread announces another pressure without allowing its consequences to develop.

Padda remains the reason those loose strands do not pull the series apart. Her Meenu can bristle at being restricted by her father, endure the strain of questioning and grow firmer in her resolve without becoming a spotless emblem of courage.

That matters in a story where strangers seize on a snack as a reason to disbelieve her. Yadav’s quiet command and Shaikh’s professional reserve give her strong counterparts, though the writing does not always make as much of their encounters as it could. The courtroom material keeps Meenu’s account in view; the first episode has already shown how much she must withstand before anyone agrees to hear it.

Hunkkaar: The Roar premiered globally on JioHotstar on September 25, 2026. The socio-thriller courtroom drama miniseries follows a 17-year-old student whose grave accusation against a powerful cult leader ignites a high-stakes collision between faith, media pressure, and the legal system.

Full Credits

• Title: Hunkkaar: The Roar

• Distributor: JioHotstar

• Release date: September 25, 2026

• Rating: A (Adults Only) / TV-MA

• Running time: 57 minutes per episode

• Director: Karan D. Kapadia, Heeraz Marfatia, Nitya Mehra

• Writers: Karan D. Kapadia, Nitya Mehra

• Producers and Executive Producers: Applause Entertainment

• Cast: Aneet Padda, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Arjun Mathur, Raghubir Yadav, Ram Kapoor, Zoya Hussain, Rajesh Sharma