Tollywood star Mimi Chakraborty leaves a mark in her OTT debut as a novice lawyer taking on a veteran legal eagle — played by Tota Roy Choudhury — in Chandrasish Ray’s Jaha Bolibo Shotto Bolibo, but the Hoichoi series falls short of the tension and tight pacing that are the hallmark of a good courtroom drama.
Jaha Bolibo Shotto Bolibo is based on a real-life incident that rocked Kolkata on the first day of 2003. The previous night, a traffic sergeant, Bapi Sen, was killed by some policemen when he tried to stop them from molesting a woman.
Director Chandrasish Ray fictionalises this incident and puts the focus on the legal tussle that begins to bring the culprits to book. In Jaha Bolibo Shotto Bolibo, it is 2007 and Tapas Saha, a police officer with Kolkata Police, comes across a group of men harassing a girl on New Year’s Eve. Turns out the men also serve in the police force. When Tapas tries to stop them, they beat him to death and run.
Mimi plays Pritha Roy, a young lawyer at the start of her career, who wants to take up Tapas Saha’s case after reading the shocking news reports. Her adversary in the courtroom is renowned advocate Joyraj Singha (Tota). Moreover, corrupt officers in the police force tamper with evidence and witnesses to protect the accused at any cost.
Pritha is determined to go all the way to get justice for Tapas Saha, and she might have a personal stake in it too, which is revealed through a fantastic twist in the final episode.
Much like Arindam Sil’s 2017 legal drama, Dhananjay, which also had Mimi playing a lawyer fighting another high-profile criminal case, Jaha Bolibo Shotto Bolibo looks for answers to the questions that are often left open-ended in real-life courtrooms.
The series benefits from well-rounded characters and the initial courtroom sequences are quite riveting. But soon the story starts leaning heavily on extensive backstories, altering the tone from a nail-biting thriller to that of an emotional melodrama. The criminal case takes a back seat and the investigation sequences lose steam due to flat twists in the plot. The camaraderie between Pritha and investigating officer Arnab, played by Anujoy Chattopadhyay, feels half-hearted and lacking solidity.
In her OTT debut, Mimi strikes a balance between feistiness and vulnerability as an ambitious woman dealing with her own crisis and dilemma while standing up to power and authority. Tota plays the crafty and loathsome defence lawyer Joyraj Singha with a flourish, bringing shades of arrogance, pride and woundedness to his portrayal.
