How ‘Black Warrant’ Became a Streaming Success

Two weeks into 2025, it seems unlikely that audiences will witness 45 minutes of Indian television as bleak and disturbing as “Phaansi Kothi” (“Gallows”), the second episode of Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh’s Black Warrant. Set in the early 1980s, the Netflix series drops viewers deep into the underbelly of Tihar Jail — Asia’s largest prison complex — a trash can where hardened criminals serve out their sentences and the jailers guarding them act as its lid. 

“Phaansi Kothi” tracks a contentious moment in Tihar’s history. On January 31, 1982, Ranga and Billa, two men courts convicted of murdering teenage siblings Sanjay and Geeta Chopra — who was also raped — are to die by hanging. The enormity of the event is not lost on the tense Tihar staff, desperate to ensure a “smooth and uneventful” execution. Yet, it is anything but that.

“Phaansi Kothi” sees Motwane operating at the peak of his capabilities. There’s the history buff in him, packing in dense details, the storyteller heightening the tension, and the keen eye, making room for shifting perspectives and the contradictions of the truth itself.