Article 15

Article 15 is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language crime drama film directed and produced by Anubhav Sinha, who co-wrote the screenplay with Gaurav Solanki. The film stars Ayushmann Khurrana as a police detective who investigates the disappearance of three girls from a small village, uncovering a history of caste-based oppression along the way. The supporting cast includes Nassar, Manoj Pahwa, Kumud Mishra, Isha Talwar, Sayani Gupta, Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Sushil Pandey, Veen Harsh and Sumbul Touqeer. The film is named after Article 15 of the Constitution of India, which prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or birthplace. While not based on one specific event, the film is inspired by multiple real-life cases involving crimes driven by caste-based discrimination, including the 2014 Badaun gang rape allegations and 2016 Una flogging incident. Principal photography began on 1 March 2019 in Lucknow. The film's soundtrack was composed by Anurag Saikia, Piyush Shankar, Devin Parker and Gingger with lyrics written by Rashmi Virag, Shakeel Azmi, Slow Cheeta, Dee MC, Kaam Bhaari and SpitFire, and released under the banner Zee Music Company. Plot In the village of Laalgaon in Uttar Pradesh, two Dalit girls are seen trapped in a school bus by some men. Ayan Ranjan, a St. Stephen's College, Delhi graduate and an Indian Police Service officer, is assigned to Laalgaon as the Additional Superintendent of Police and is warmly welcomed by officers Brahmadatt Singh and Kisan Jatav. Ayan encounters various forms of caste discrimination as soon as he arrives in the village, and periodically shares what he observes to his wife, Aditi, over the phone. Local villagers come to Ayan's reception asking the officers to find the missing girls but are turned down. Ayan reunites with his college friend Satyendra Rai, who is also a state government employee, who behaves suspiciously throughout the night. The next morning, the girls are found hanging from a tree, while a third girl, Pooja, is reported missing. Ayan orders Brahmadatt to file an FIR and to obtain the postmortem report for the deceased girls. The girls' autopsy yields evidence that they were gang raped, but Brahmadatt prevents the release of this information and instead pushes a narrative suggesting that the girls, who were cousins, were lesbians lovers in an incestuous relationship and thus hanged by their fathers in an honor killing.