Bro, a Malayalam film titled Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar was released on Netflix on October 9th.
Although the title might sound a bit unusual, the film is actually quite excellent.
Some people are even comparing it to Drishyam—which makes sense, as it also involves a murder, the concealment of evidence, and a cat-and-mouse game to outsmart the police.
However, the key difference is that in Drishyam, the person evading the police is an ordinary man, whereas in this film, the individuals trying to outsmart the police are police officers themselves.
If you haven’t watched this movie yet, I highly recommend you check it out. There is one small catch, though: it isn’t available in Hindi; it’s currently only streaming on Netflix in its original Malayalam language.
So, if you haven’t seen it yet and are planning to watch it in Hindi later, take note—we are about to dive into the details of the ending. So obviously you are going to get spoilers ahead, right? Spoiler warning has been given.
Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar Ending Explained: How It All Began
The story begins with Aleena Abraham. Her husband, Aby, was a police officer who died while on duty.
Following this, the police department offered Aleena a job. However, rather than taking an office-based role, she chose to follow in her husband’s footsteps by wearing the uniform; she completed her police training and joined a police station.
There, she met Sreenath, Dasan, and Divya. The four of them became close friends, but one night, their lives changed completely.
During a night patrol, they encountered a man named Jayaprakash, who attempted to flee from the police. He was apprehended and brought to the station. Upon observing his behaviour—and noticing injury marks on his body—Aleena began to grow suspicious of him.
Aleena instructed Sreenath to check the trunk of Jayaprakash’s vehicle. In the process, a scuffle broke out between Jayaprakash and the officers.
Jayaprakash managed to snatch Divya’s service pistol, but during the ensuing struggle, a shot was fired, resulting in Jayaprakash’s death.
Although the gunshot was accidental, the situation was dire: a man had died inside a police station. An investigation could have cost all four of them their jobs and ruined their lives. Consequently, they decided to cover up the incident.
However, the story does not end there; upon opening the trunk of Jayaprakash’s car, they discover the body of a young woman named Meera.
As it turned out, Jayaprakash and Meera were not ordinary individuals—they were thieves.
On the night Jayaprakash was caught by the police, the pair had attempted to commit a burglary at the home of a retired army officer named Vasudevan.
Vasudevan caught them in the act, and during the ensuing confrontation, Jayaprakash used Meera as a human shield to save his own life, leading to her death.
Following this, Jayaprakash threatens to harm Vasudevan’s pet. Vasudevan backs away to protect it, and, seizing this opportunity, Jayaprakash kills him.
In other words, by the time Jayaprakash arrived at the police station, he had already committed a murder.
The Murder Cover-Up and Harris Meeran’s Investigation
Enter DYSP Harris Meeran of the Crime Branch to investigate the murder—and this is where the real mind game begins. Harris is no ordinary police officer; he possesses extensive investigative experience and has even authored books on his own investigative methods.
Interestingly, Aleena’s husband, Aby, held Harris in high regard, and Aleena herself frequently reads his books. Now, however, Aleena finds herself having to evade the very man whose investigative techniques she has been studying.
To begin with, the four police officers delete the CCTV footage from the station. However, it will take 14 days for the backup data to be completely erased, so their primary objective is simply to get through these next two weeks.
Additionally, a voice message is sent to Jayaprakash’s wife from his own phone. This message was crafted by stitching together snippets of previous recordings of Jayaprakash, intended to make his wife believe he is still alive and away on work.
But this very voice message eventually becomes their undoing; when Harris listens to it closely, he detects the sound of the morning *namaz* (Islamic prayer) in the background—even though the message was sent in the evening.
Realizing that something is amiss with the recording, Harris follows the trail—using mobile location data and other clues—until his suspicions point directly toward the police station.
Harris gradually comes to understand that the four officers have done something to Jayaprakash. Yet, suspicion alone does not prove guilt; he requires concrete evidence. The most crucial piece of evidence would be Jayaprakash’s body.
The plan Aleena devised here is quite interesting. Initially, it appears that the four of them have buried the bodies somewhere behind the police station. However, when Xavier notices something amiss, they brush it off by claiming they had buried a cat.
Later, Haris finds out the truth; he arrives at the scene with police dogs and begins a search.
But the bodies are not found in the ground—they had been hidden inside a seized lorry, loaded with sand, parked near the station. In other words, while everyone was digging up the ground in search of the bodies, they were actually concealed inside a vehicle. Haris, however, manages to uncover this as well.
How Aleena Hid the Bodies and Fooled the Police
When the four police officers return to remove the bodies, Haris catches them red-handed.
At this point, it seems like the game is over—the bodies have been discovered, and the four officers have been caught right alongside them. But this is when another part of Aleena’s plan comes to light.
As it turns out, an elephant tusk had also been placed in the lorry, alongside the bodies. One might ask: why include an elephant tusk?
The tusk was part of some previously seized evidence at the police station. Aleena deliberately placed it in the lorry so that, should they be caught, the four officers would have an alternative explanation for their presence there.
In other words, if they were accused of hiding bodies, they could point to the elephant tusk instead—claiming they were there in connection with that case, rather than to dispose of the bodies.
While this might cast suspicion on them regarding a different crime, it would be difficult to definitively prove that their true intent was to destroy evidence of a murder.
Haris immediately grasps this ploy; he chooses not to include the elephant tusk in the official case records, knowing that doing so would provide the defence with an entirely different narrative.
However, there is one point here that is important to understand. The ‘ivory plan’ does not, in itself, negate the murder charge. It is merely another story concocted by Aleena, which she intends to use for her own defense.
The Missing Bullet Twist Explained
This brings us to the film’s biggest twist: when the post-mortem of Jayprakash’s body is conducted, it is discovered that the bullet is missing from his body.
This is a crucial detail—had Haris recovered that bullet, he could have compared it against Divya’s pistol, potentially proving that it was the weapon used to shoot Jayprakash. However, Aleena had already removed the bullet before hiding the body.
Haris realises that one of the four individuals must know the whereabouts of the bullet. He pressures all of them and eventually deduces that Aleena is the only one who holds the true secret. Consequently, he subjects her to an illicit narco-analysis test.
In a narco-analysis test, drugs are administered to extract information from an individual. Haris does exactly this, and during the procedure, Aleena reveals that the bullet is hidden inside a book belonging to Haris, which is kept at her home.
Haris immediately goes there.
He checks the book.
And sure enough, he finds the bullet, concealed within the back of the book.
This was a major victory for Haris, as he had finally found the piece of evidence he had been searching for all this time. However, Aleena’s true plan was yet to be revealed. When the bullet underwent forensic analysis, the situation took an unexpected turn: the rifling marks on the bullet did not match those from Divya’s pistol.
Now, what are “rifling marks”?
Essentially, there are specific, distinct markings inside a gun’s barrel. As a bullet travels through the barrel, these markings are imprinted onto it. By comparing these patterns, forensic experts can determine which specific firearm was used to fire a given bullet.
In this case, the markings on the bullet found in the book did not match Divya’s pistol. This meant that the bullet in Haris’s possession was not the one that had actually struck Jayprakash.
This raises a crucial question: if it wasn’t the actual bullet, why did Aleena lead Haris to that specific location? And where did the real bullet end up? The answer is revealed in the film’s climax.
In fact, even before the narco-analysis test, Aleena had devised a plan to lead Harris toward misleading evidence. She was already using a substance called MDMA; according to the film, this allowed her to maintain some degree of control over her responses during the narco-analysis test. She then deliberately tipped Harris off about the existence of a ‘fake’ (planted) bullet.
In reality, it is not certain that two different substances would interact in such a way as to neutralize each other’s effects—this is a piece of ‘cinematic liberty’ taken by the film.
Now, where did that second bullet come from? Recall that early in the film, during her police training, Aleena met a man named Sanal, who happened to know her husband, Aby. Leveraging this old connection, Aleena managed to procure a second bullet, which she then hid inside one of Harris’s books.
Consider her strategy here:
Aleena wanted Harris to find a bullet—because once he did, he would naturally assume it was the crucial piece of evidence and send it for forensic analysis. However, when the ballistics report arrived, it would reveal that the bullet did not match the murder weapon, thereby undermining Harris’s most significant piece of evidence.
In short, rather than simply hiding a bullet from Harris, Aleena intentionally steered him toward a false one.
How Aleena Tricked Harris With a Fake Bullet
The matter then reaches the court. However, because the link between the bullet and the pistol cannot be proven, the murder case against the four individuals weakens, and they are granted bail.
It is important to note that this does not mean the court has declared them innocent forever; for the time being, they are simply out of the case. But a question still remains:
What Happened to the Real Bullet? The Ending Explained
Where did the actual bullet go? We get the answer at the end, when Haris and Aleena meet. Aleena points toward her ring, and with that, the film’s biggest twist is revealed.
As it turns out, Aleena had melted down the very bullet that killed Jayprakash and fashioned it into a ring—using her father-in-law’s tools and his expertise in metalwork.
Recall that earlier in the film, we see her father-in-law’s workshop and his metal-related work. At the time, it seemed like an ordinary detail about the family, but the climax reveals that this was the very means used to alter the bullet.
In other words, the actual bullet hadn’t been discarded somewhere far away; it had been with Aleena all along—though no longer in a state that could be matched to Divya’s pistol. Having learned from Haris’s book that evidence of a crime is always left behind somewhere, Aleena chose not to just hide the evidence, but to completely transform its form.
Furthermore, by placing a fake bullet inside that same book, she steered Haris in the wrong direction. Thus, the book served both as a source of knowledge for her and as a tool to frame Haris.
What Does Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar Mean?
But why was Aleena doing all of this? Throughout the film, we are given recurring glimpses into her past. She lost her parents in a flood during her childhood, and later, as an adult, she lost her husband as well.
Now, her young daughter is the most important person in her life. Aleena’s greatest fear is that her daughter might also have to endure the same loneliness—growing up without parents—that she herself experienced in her own childhood.
Furthermore, Divya had become pregnant. This is why Aleena is striving to save not only her own life but also the lives of Divya and their other companions.
However, this does not justify the actions of the four; while Jayaprakash’s death may have been accidental, the subsequent concealment of the body, the deletion of CCTV footage, and the deliberate misdirection of the police investigation were all intentional acts.
This brings us to the film’s title: Pradhama Drishtiya Kuttakkar, which essentially translates to “an offender or accused at first glance.”
In the story, Haris realises that the four have done something wrong, and the audience is also aware of what actually transpired. Yet, knowing about a crime is not the same as proving it in a court of law with concrete evidence—a distinction upon which the film’s entire climax is built.
It is worth noting, however, that in reality, a single mismatched bullet would not automatically cause an entire murder case to collapse.
Other forensic evidence, witness testimonies, mobile records, and the act of concealing evidence could still be subject to separate investigation. Therefore, it is more accurate to view the film’s conclusion as a clever cinematic strategy.
Personally, I found the mind game between Haris and Aleena to be the most compelling aspect of the film. Haris possessed years of experience, yet Aleena—by studying his own methods—was able to anticipate his next moves. Ultimately, Haris’s greatest challenge became the fact that his opponent had figured out exactly how he thought.