The second season of Paatal Lok, which premiered at the top of the year, builds on its predecessor’s scathing critique of India’s fractured social and political structures. Launched in 2020, the series was a game-changer in the Indian streaming landscape. It was one of the first crime thrillers that tried to humanize the Delhi police and Indian carceral system.  In the first season, Inspector Hathiram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat), a disillusioned Delhi cop, finds himself unraveling a high-profile conspiracy that stretches from the corridors of Lutyens Delhi to the forgotten corners of Outer Jamna Paar. The show borrows from Hindu cosmology, mapping India’s socio-political landscape into Swarg Lok/Heaven World (the ruling elite), Dharti Lok/Earth World (the struggling middle class), and Paatal Lok/Netherworld (the criminalized and marginalized).  Through its spatial layering of New Delhi, Paatal Lok season 1 exposes the machinery of power: who controls it, who enforces it, and who is…

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