Aug 30, 2026 10:45pm IST
‘Babita Singh Reporting’ Review: Nimisha Sajayan’s Performance Elevates This Compelling Case Against The Patriarchy
“Babita Singh Reporting” on Prime Video establishes its place in a genre that has collected some truly remarkable entries. A female cop not taken seriously enough at work due to her gender, but whose tiniest failures are taken way too seriously at home because of her gender. She’s limited in her taking but must be unlimited when she has to give. Amita Vyas’s writing and Ambiecka Pandit’s direction manage to highlight patriarchy’s oppressive foot on society's neck in the quotidien struggles of a working woman. And the performance by Nimisha Sajayan refuses to let anyone look away from her face.
ASI Babita Singh is trying hard to strike a work-life balance. She’s a cop, delegated mostly clerical paperwork and often infantilized. She’s not Babita, but ‘Baby’ to everyone, from her fellow cop and friend, the idealistic Karamjeet (Geetika Vidya Ohlyan), who tries to get Babita to stand up for herself, to her senior, SI Sethi (Rajesh Kumar), who pawns off his mistakes on her, right up to the SHO (Nawal Shukla), who doesn’t take Babita’s enthusiasm for field work too seriously.
At home, Babita is pressured by her husband of two years, Sharad (Anshuman Pushkar), to get time off work so they can visit their shared hometown. In Rewa, Sharad’s mother (Sunita Rajwar) expects Babita to care for her pregnant sister-in-law, Guddi, and throw her a baby shower worthy of Guddi’s in-laws. The one person truly proud of Babita is her school friend, Bansi (Barun Sobti), an artist who makes the Raavan effigy for their town’s Dussehra celebrations, among other tchotchkes.
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But when Bansi is found dead merely a day after requesting a meeting with her, Babita is consumed by the need to find out the truth, which she is sure doesn’t lie with the local drug addict arrested for Bansi’s murder. She delves into Bansi’s work dealings, his relationship with his wife, daughter and estranged brother while struggling to keep up with the demands of her own marital home.
There’s something incredibly organic and real about Babita’s world, the people in it and the subtle ways in which the film shows how patriarchy thrives, nestled in the little acts we allow to happen for our own peace and comfort, and in the name of love, respect and privacy. Babita’s oppression isn’t as obviously terrifying as the wife she played in “The Great Indian Kitchen.” Her male superiors at work, her husband and in-laws have been conditioned to believe this is the way things are supposed to be.
There’s no loud messaging of how unfair things are for women, but simple scenes plucked from every woman’s life. “Babita Singh Reporting” comes alive in its little details that are so normalised, they're never thought about twice. And it gets you to think about them. Sharad showing his mother and sister all the gifts that Babita shopped for, while she does the dirty dishes. The sister-in-law talking about her own difficult life at her in-laws’ home, but making outrageous demands of Babita in her home. Or Sharad supporting Babita’s need to find out what happened to Bansi, but only as long as she fulfils her daughter-in-law duties.
Nimisha Sajayan looks and moves like an everywoman, whether it is her health struggles with thyroid or her instinct to comfort her husband even when he hijacks a pivotal emotional moment for her and makes it about him. It’s difficult to look away from Babita’s ever-so-emotive face, but if you do, you’re rewarded with even more stories. Barun Sobti’s Bansi appears for only a few scenes but makes an impact big enough to haunt the entire narrative. In the film’s climax, when the truth is revealed, Sobti’s appearance induces goosebumps.
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The film has shades of "Soni," "Kohrra," "Santosh," and any other streaming title that is invoked when you watch it. In the background of Bansi and Babita’s stories are men handing women jobs at the workplace that are deemed “feminine”; women enforcing the same system that victimised them; and men unhappy in gender roles that go against their very being, unable to see the societal shackles that actually bind them.
And that’s where the film pulls its real trick. “Babita Singh Reporting” isn’t just reporting on its protagonist’s life. And the real villain isn’t Bansi’s killer. The film’s murder mystery framework is a perfect setup to unravel the different ways in which patriarchy tears at the fabric of society, affecting both men and women equally. Patriarchy here is the metaphorical Raavan that most men think only hurts the goddess by abducting her. But at its heart, it is a man’s ego, his greed, his covetous desire to possess that destroys and victimises everything in its wake, gender no bar.
The film juxtaposes Bansi’s story with Babita’s and lets this revelation show rather than tell the harsh truth through some elaborate monologue spewed in anger as Babita’s rage explodes. And that, in itself, is another great twist which complements the other twist in the film. It might come as a surprise to most men who think women in power want to burn the world down. The film’s final few minutes of epilogue correct that assumption and add to Babita’s story, as she returns to her work, this time reporting with a fresh new perspective. Take “Babita Singh Reporting” and Nimisha Sajayan’s act as essential viewing to get one yourself.
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