Babita Singh Reporting Review: Nimisha Sajayan’s Quietly Fierce Portrait of a Woman Finding Her Voice
Babita Singh Reporting is a quietly fierce character study dressed up as a murder mystery, and Nimisha Sajayan carries it almost single-handedly.
Released on Prime Video on August 28, Ambiecka Pandit’s feature debut (written by Amita Vyas, with Sudip Sharma as executive producer) follows ASI Babita “Baby” Singh, a people-pleasing, underconfident assistant sub-inspector in Bhopal who joined the force on a compassionate appointment after her father’s death. She is constantly sidelined to paperwork, nicknamed into infantilization, and so conditioned to accommodate everyone that she accepts a fake disciplinary charge just to get leave. Visiting her in-laws in Rewa for her sister-in-law’s godbharai, she reconnects briefly with childhood friend Bansi (Barun Sobti), an eccentric local idol-maker. He is murdered that same night. While juggling household demands, passive-aggressive family dynamics, an emotionally manipulative husband (Anshumaan Pushkar), and local police indifference, Babita launches an unofficial investigation that doubles as a slow reclamation of her own agency.
What works is the film’s deliberate refusal to turn Babita into the standard Bollywood female-cop fantasy—no slow-motion swagger, no booming dialogues, no hyper-competent superwoman in khaki. She is a woman first who happens to be a cop. The everyday patriarchy is rendered with sharp, lived-in detail: the emotional labor of keeping the peace at home, the micro-aggressions around her body and competence, the way “supportive” men still need her to stay small. Sajayan is exceptional here. She plays Babita with exhausted restraint—flinches at the nickname, quiet stares of resignation that slowly harden into resolve—without overplaying the awakening. It feels specific and universal at once, closer in spirit to the domestic pressures of The Great Indian Kitchen than to flashy procedurals. The supporting cast (Sunita Rajwar as the mother-in-law, in particular) lands the small cruelties effectively.
Where it falters is the actual crime story. The investigation is secondary by design, but it still needs to hold water. Bansi remains thinly sketched; the mystery develops convenient clues, undercooked red herrings, and an anticlimactic resolution that never fully justifies Babita’s obsessive stake or the procedural stakes. The film is stronger at diagnosing the suffocating social structure than at delivering a satisfying whodunnit. At over two hours, the pacing occasionally sags under the weight of domestic observation when the plot needs tighter propulsion. It wants to be both a feminist character study and a crime drama; the former largely succeeds, the latter feels undercooked.
Still, the ambition is refreshing. In a landscape cluttered with loud, gravity-defying cops or didactic social-issue vehicles, Babita Singh Reporting chooses the quieter, more honest path of a woman learning (imperfectly) to stop shrinking. Sajayan’s performance and the film’s clear-eyed look at emotional labor and soft patriarchy make it worth watching even when the mystery doesn’t fully deliver. It’s not the sharpest thriller of the year, but as a portrait of a woman reporting for duty—in uniform and out of it—it’s one of the more thoughtful recent Hindi efforts.
Worth a watch for Sajayan alone. Just don’t go in expecting airtight twists.
