The Real Life Story Behind OTT Film '200 Halla Ho' Is Surreal And Important

200 Halla Ho real story: OTT film 200 Halla Ho, released earlier today, is receiving mixed reviews from the audience but with the simultaneous and full recognition of the significance of the theme it revolves around.

Directed by Sarthak Dasgupta, the film draws on incidents of Dalit women's rape and systemic abuse, followed by the consequences when hundreds of survivors, fuelled by anger, humiliation and inaction on part of the state, take the law into their own hands. More about the film here.

But did you know, the film is inspired by real-life events?

The story goes back to 2004, Nagpur, when a sisterhood of Dalit women - in their shared grief and fury - were driven to mob and lynch the upper-caste accused who had raped them for years. There was no remorse, no fear. Only a thirst for retributive justice.

Surreally, the rapist bled out on the white floors in a court of law, reports from the time detail.

200 Halla Ho Real Story: When Women Rally Sisterhoods For Justice

The real incidents occurred with robber, rapist and extortionist Akku Yadav pinned at the centre of it all. He operated with a gang in and around Kasturba Nagar slum where he was born and grew up. They terrorised residents in the area, causing local menace by routinely harassing women, stealing from shops, inflicting violence with impunity. Police, fattening their pockets with bribes from Yadav, apparently let him function undeterred.

A slumlord, he reportedly preferred raping his victims over killing them - due to ease in covering up the crime. In fact, in her book Killing Justice: Vigilantism in Nagpur, author Swati Mehta writes Yadav's first known crime was a gangrape in 1991.

Sexually assaulting women on their wedding night, violating minors, stripping women naked - this was all and more Yadav was notorious for. Until in 2004, a woman rose up.

The Death of Akku Yadav

Usha Narayane, one of the residents in the slum, attempted to file a complaint, enraged by Yadav's rape of a minor girl. Yadav and his associates harassed, abused and threatened Narayane over multiple days but this time, the Dalit families of Kasturba Nagar retaliated. Faced with unanticipated backlash, Yadav sought police protection and there was indication he might be let out on bail.

August 13, on the day of his hearing, armed with knives, chilli powder and other tools, hundreds of women gathered at the Nagpur court for the proceedings. It was supposedly a dramatic scene - an unrepentant Yadav abusing one of the women survivors in the courtroom, her attacking him physically, inspiring the whole crowd of women with her warcry, and the rapist lying dead in a matter of minutes.

"It was an emotional outburst," Narayane said, as quoted in The Guardian. 

Some women were arrested post the lynching but instead of ostracism, found solidarity in their community. All women took up responsibility for what played out in the courtroom that day, leaving the case cloudy. In 2014, it was reported all 18 accused in the case were acquitted for "lack of evidence," bringing the ten-year-old case to a close.

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