Dahan (1997 film)

• Indrani Halder as Srobona Sarkar, Jhinuk
• Pradip Mukherjee as Jhinuk's father
• Shakuntala Barua as Jhinuk's mother
• Shiboprosad Mukherjee as Jhinuk's brother
• Abhishek Chatterjee as Polash Chaudhury
• Rituparna Sengupta as Romita Chaudhury
• Suchitra Mitra as Jhinuk'prs thammi
• Subhendu Chatterjee as Romita's father
• Mamata Shankar as Romita's sister-in-law
• Sanjeev Dasgupta as Jhinuk's fiancé

A newly wed couple Romita (Rituparna Sengupta) and Palash (Abhishek Chatterjee) are attacked on the open road. The goons molested Romita, but nobody comes forward to help, except a schoolteacher, Jhinuk (Indrani Halder), who rushes to the spot to help. She is later hailed a heroine by the press. One day, Palash, due to misunderstanding in a feat of rage ends up raping his wife. Romita wanted to stay at her parents house, there, she met her elder sister, with whom she showed interest to leave the in-laws and to shift to Canada. Her sister wished to have a tour Romi-Palash both, but she admits that she needs to come alone. Depressed, Romita could not meet Jhinuk or couldn't reached her by telephone, so they did not know how to face the case in court together. Due to her conservative in-laws, Romita pressured much to leave the goons or to stop the case there; she admits unclear statement in the court. On the other side, Jhinuk also having requested from her fiancé, the family of the goons started to influence with lots of offers, even a promotion abroad to dominate Jhinuk personally. She was reluctant to face those proposals and an uneasiness had grown between them. Jhinuk was rigid in her decision to punish the criminals. She was honest in her thoughts. On the contrary, threats from the goons and lack of police support for the case was becoming tough. She was steady and clear about the criminals in the court, but faced insults by humiliating questions. The two different female characters lost the case, the criminals got release afterwards. Romi-Jhinuk have feelings towards their life in such different tests. They are not under the same light, but turn experienced about life, family and narrowness of the society. They became stronger enough to go on to the future alone in their own way. Romi wrote letters to her sister about her changed status. Jhinuk was determined to punish the assailants, and helped police. However, the experience of Jhinuk turns out to be a frustrating experience for her when the victim's family turn away, but the writer or the director wanted to show the leads are stronger than their past life. In Jhinuk's character, Indrani Halder did very realistic job, her performance is the lighted part to create an strength in audience mind, Rituparna Sengupta did another important performance that took all the sympathy from audience mind to make them re-think about the life-hell situation of a victim. Both the Director and Writer are successful to develop the thought-provoking story on-screen.

Rituparna Sengupta and Indrani Halder shared the National Film Award for Best Actress in 1998 for the film. Ghosh won National Film Award for Best Screenplay.

• DVD Review, The Telegraph, 22 April 2005.
• ‘I have learnt to make theplas ’, The Times of India, 13 April 2008.
• Shifting from the Bengali milieu, The Hindu, 24 December 2004.

• Dahan on IMDb