After the second season of Paatal Lok (Amazon Prime Video), it’s safe to say that nobody else in India has mastered the police procedural like Sudip Sharma. Known for writing acclaimed films like Udta Punjab (2016) and Sonchiriya (2019) – Sharma became a household name after the first season of the show in 2020, much like his lead actor – Jaideep Ahlawat. Since then, Sharma has written Kohhra (2023), using the mould of a police investigation to uncover the oppressive culture of patriarchy typical to Punjab. In the second season of Paatal Lok, Sharma is still grappling with the larger rot in society using a trail of missing persons and murder probes.

Sub inspector Hathi Ram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat) of Jamna-paar police station has become more confident in life after the adventures of the first season. He finds himself entangled in a political murder that takes place in Delhi with its roots in Nagaland. He, along with IPS Iqbal Ansari ( Ishwak Singh), goes into the interiors of North East India to find out a complex society striving for power by any means. So many factions, so much greed and so bizarre situations. They meet Barua (Tillottama Shome) as the local police authority and begin a chase that’s forcing them to move in circles. At least, this is what happens in the first four episodes I watched after the show started streaming on Thursday night.

Hathiram Chaudhary, the permanent resident of Paatal Lok (netherworld) is back, and with him, so is the world of crime and murky dealings that need a desperate cleanup. Paatal Lok Season 1 came out during the first lockdown and blew everyone’s mind with its taut storyline and strong performances. It opened up ways for other similar cop stories that dealt with cases from the underbelly of society. Some were good, some were mere copies, but none captured the attention of viewers the way Paatal Lok had. It took the makers 5 years to come up with a sequel, and after watching season 2 of Paatal Lok, I have to admit it was worth the wait.

Reunions are always bittersweet. And then there is Sudip Sharma’s idea of a reunion. In the new season of Paatal Lok, Hathi Ram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat) first catches sight of his old pal Ansari (Ishwak Singh) at a morgue. Ansari was once his junior at their inconsequential Outer Jamna Paar police station. Now, though, as a hotshot IPS officer working the big cases, he commands respect. Hathi Ram stands off and stares, resisting contact. A team-up is imminent, but the morbidity of the setting makes it poignant. The Hathi Ram-Ansari friendship is our anchor in Season 2. Created by Sudip Sharma, the first season of Prime Video’s crime series was a pandemic hit—a grim, coruscating procedural, kaleidoscopic in its scale and scope, picking up hot-button topics like caste violence and Islamophobia. The second season is subtler and less combative, subduing commentary in favour of human relations. At times, it becomes a touching meditation on male bonds. When Hathi Ram’s name comes up during a briefing, Ansari corrects his higher-up that he is not an ‘SHO’, just an ordinary inspector. He isn’t being cruel or conceited, just realistic about their differing vantage points.

A beloved political leader from Nagaland is found brutally murdered in Delhi. The timing is dubious. It’s on the eve of a landmark business summit between the ‘mainland’ and the ‘margins’: The central government is primed to invest thousands of crores into the development and tourism sector of Nagaland. Protests break out in Kohima; conflicts erupt between the slain man’s loyalists and the rebel factions against this soul-selling deal. The case is given to ACP Imran Ansari (Ishwak Singh), fresh from topping his IPS batch. The optics are irresistible: A Muslim officer must lead an investigation into the killing of an unprotected guest — an Indian outsider — in the capital. If things go wrong, Ansari is a readymade scapegoat. Meanwhile, jaded protagonist and Ansari’s ex-boss Hathi Ram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat) continues to bat in the minor league. He flirts with the idea of quitting, but an inconspicuous case of a missing husband puts him on a collision course with the high-profile investigation. Most officers are expected to do their job, but Hathi Ram is destined to do his duty.

If ‘Paatal Lok’ has been one of your favourite series and you have been all agog waiting for its second season, which has dropped after a long wait of five years, first and foremost, drop the comparison meter. For, the new season is a beast of its own kind, stands firm on its feet and lands with impact and force. Indeed, both Jaideep Ahlawat and Ishwak Singh reprise their parts of Hathi Ram Chaudhary and Imran Ansari. As do a few other actors. It’s still the same murky world of crime and police. Only, showrunner and writer Sudip Sharma charts the not oft-explored territory and takes us to Nagaland without fetishising the beauty of the state. Or its people, who like any other in the country run the gamut of good, bad and ugly and have their own set of compulsions: ‘you kill only when you have no other choice’. And, once again, the heady cocktail of crime, politics, wry humour, action and drama makes for compelling viewing.

When we first met Hathiram Chaudhary in the summer of 2020, humanity was in the grip of a severe pandemic, and ‘paatal lok’ — to now put it lightly — didn’t seem to be too much of an alien word (or world) at that moment. The show provided a much-needed distraction, and was a rare watch that gave us food for thought, metamorphosing from a police procedural to a tightly-knit thriller that compelled us to examine the fault lines of caste, social prejudice, marginalisation, vote-bank politics, fake news and religious divide. Five years later, Hathiram — played like second skin by the irrepressible Jaideep Ahlawat — is back. In Season 2, the stakes may be higher, the socio-political environment more tense and the cocktail of betrayal, deceit, double-cross and revenge more tricky and tenuous… but Hathiram has remained the same. A man still world-weary and honest to a fault. But if angst defined Chaudhary in the first season — a sincere if bullheaded cop thirsting for one challenging case in his predominantly unremarkable career — it is acceptance that forms his core this time. Hathiram hasn’t made any significant strides in his career, but as a man he seems content. ‘Seems’ is the operative word here.

When Hathi Ram Chaudhary says in his world-weary manner, ‘hum toh paatal lok ke permanent niwasi hain’, he’s not just addressing a character in the series. He’s plunging us into the nether-world again, and we dive right in, willingly. The first season of Paatal Lok (2020), directed by Avinash Arun and created by Sudip Sharma, quickly become a benchmark, in the way it lifted a familiar world — weatherbeaten-but-idealistic cops pulled into cases of murder and corruption in high places — by singular story-telling, and characters that stayed with us. I’ve sorely missed my favourite cop, entire lifetimes imprinted in the craggy lines of his face, in the interim. Welcome back, Chaudhary sir.