Mohandas

Meghna Sengupta, a correspondent working at a news channel in New Delhi, one day receives a videotape from a remote place in Madhya Pradesh, Anuppur. On the tape, a battered young man claims to be the real Mohandas and alleges that someone else has stolen his identity. Someone else is living as 'Mohandas'.

Intrigued by what looks like an unusual small-town scam, Meghna makes a trip to Anuppur. There, she unearths a more harrowing and surreal story. Mohandas is a topper in studies from the poor community of basket-weavers and is overjoyed at long last when he is selected for a good white-collar post in Oriental Coal Mines. But he is kept waiting and waiting to actually get the job. Long afterwards, when he has given up and reconciled to it, he learns that someone else has assumed his name and has already taken his job! When he rushes to protest, he is beaten up and thrown out.

Meghna places this story in the media. Harshvardhan, a lawyer from the district, takes this case of stolen identity to court with the intention of hauling up the usurper. With more bizarre results.

Irony and satire run as undercurrents as the film plumbs the absurd levels to which democratic institutions can be manipulated today. It is also an allegory of how a fake identity displaces the real one in contemporary times.