Hunkkaar The Roar Review: ★★★½☆ (3.5/5)
Hunkkaar The Roar has a genuinely gripping premise and strong central performances, but its scattered writing keeps it from fully exploring the deeper questions about blind faith and institutional power it clearly wants to ask.
Rating: ★★★½☆ (3.5/5)
Platform: JioHotstar
Genre: Courtroom Drama
Episodes: 6
Cast: Aneet Padda, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Raghubir Yadav, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub
There is a powerful early scene in Hunkkaar: The Roar where a seventeen-year-old girl walks into a police station and names the man she says sexually assaulted her. The reaction around her tells you almost everything about the world she is up against.
The accused is not just any ordinary man. He is an influential spiritual leader with thousands of devoted followers, a carefully cultivated public image, and people in positions of authority who seem reluctant to question him.
Created by Karan D Kapadia and Nitya Mehra, this six-episode JioHotstar series takes the familiar setting of a powerful godman and turns it into a police and courtroom drama. At its center is Meenu Rawat, played by Aneet Padda, whose accusation against Sunil Baapji Chakosi, played by Raghubir Yadav, sets off a chain of events involving the police, lawyers, the media, and Baapji’s fiercely loyal followers.
ACP Jasleen Singh Soin, played by Fatima Sana Shaikh, is assigned to investigate, and unlike others around her, she actually listens to Meenu, follows proper procedure, and starts looking beyond the obvious.
That investigation gives the series real early tension. This is Jasleen’s first major case, and as fellow lawyer Bhalerao points out, she has almost been set up to fail from the start, taking on someone whose influence extends far beyond his ashram.
Baapji’s followers are willing to defend him at any cost, lawyers face constant pressure, witnesses grow frightened, and even the police have to navigate crowds gathered in his support.
The problem is that while Hunkkaar clearly shows these pressures, it rarely spends enough time actually examining what they do to Jasleen personally or how genuinely difficult it is to investigate someone with this level of reach.
Fatima Sana Shaikh is particularly strong as Jasleen, never turning her into some larger-than-life crusader. There is real restraint in her performance, especially in quieter moments where the weight of the case starts affecting her personally.
Aneet Padda handles an equally difficult role with real maturity, refusing to write Meenu as a constantly distressed victim. She is scared, angry, confused, and occasionally defiant, and Padda captures these shifts without ever overplaying them, particularly in the show’s strongest courtroom scenes.
This is also where the show’s biggest weakness becomes clear. We see a genuinely unsettling Baapji commanding a massive following, but the series never really digs into what makes his devotees follow him so blindly.
His power gets repeatedly shown through crowds, fear, and loyalty, but the actual machinery behind that influence stays largely unexplored. How did he build this following in the first place? Why do people keep defending him even after serious allegations surface? The show raises these questions without ever digging deep enough into them.
To its credit, Hunkkaar does understand that the fallout from Meenu’s accusation extends well beyond the police station and courtroom. Her parents, played convincingly by Rajesh Sharma and Charu Sharma, are caught between supporting their daughter and facing the very real consequences of taking on someone as powerful as Baapji.
Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub also adds real weight as Bhalerao, the lawyer who takes on Meenu’s case, playing him not as some all-knowing hero but as someone carrying his own disappointments and personal baggage.
As more threads enter the story, including a media subplot following journalist Amitabh Sinha, played by Arjun Mathur, the series starts trying to carry too much at once. Individually, each track has real potential, but together, they make the narrative feel scattered, with some genuinely interesting conflicts never receiving the depth they clearly deserve.
Even so, the central story remains compelling enough to keep you watching. Hunkkaar is ultimately less interested in whether one man is guilty and more interested in what happens when an accusation is made against someone people have been conditioned to revere without question. Despite its uneven writing, strong performances across the board keep the series grounded and genuinely worth watching.
If eerie, unconventional storytelling is more your speed, our review of My Sad Dead is worth checking out, and if you’re curious what else is coming to streaming soon, here’s when Mango Pachcha will be available to watch.