Upamanyu Biswas
At the end of the romantic thriller drama ‘Do Patti,’ Officer Vidya Jyothi makes a turning point revelation about Dhruv Sood’s apprehension, forcing her to investigate the Pundir sisters in more detail. As new evidence arises, Jyothi finally alights upon the truth, uncovering a massive framing job that forces the detective to question her instincts. However, despite finally resolving matters, she starts doubting her morality, convictions, and steadfast dedication to the law as human values take precedence. It all comes to a head in the final moments when Jyothi has to make a significant decision that can derail the sisters’ freedom or let loose a monster back into society. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Do Patti Plot Synopsis
Vidya Jyothi is a new arrival in the police department of Devipur, Uttarakhand, a small hill station town surrounded by mountains. Although promotions have eluded the officer all her life, she is a straight shooter with a great conviction record who struggles with putting anything over the black-and-white rules of law. However, her moral stance begins to be challenged when she discovers a possible case of domestic abuse at the Sood residency. Newlywed wife Soumya sports various bruises and injuries on her face and arms that alarm Jyothi, but she is unable to proceed with the investigation because of the wife’s unwillingness to lodge a complaint. Still, she always keeps a trained eye on the woman during her patrols.
Eventually, the protagonist learns that Soumya’s husband, Dhruv Sood, runs the local paragliding adventure company, Dhruv Sood Adventures. Dhruv is the son of a wealthy businessman who demands his son to be the perfect version of himself, an arrangement that seemingly stresses him a lot. In his off period, he takes out his frustrations on Soumya through harsh physical beatings that the girl’s adopted stepmother, Ammaji, witnesses. Worried about her ward’s degrading condition, Ammaji avails the help of Jyothi and tells her the real reason behind Soumya’s indecisiveness in lodging a complaint. It turns out that Dhruv’s ex-girlfriend was Soumya’s twin sister, Shailee, with whom Soumya has a constant grudge battle.
A long time ago, Shailee and Soumya fell out because most of the attention was often showered on the latter because of her constant sickly status. Shailee was subsequently moved out to a hostel where she grew up harboring ill feelings toward her twin. She eventually returned and stole Dhruv’s attention while Soumya was courting him. However, Dhruv ended up marrying Soumya despite having his head turned by Shailee for a while. This picture-perfect romance was shattered once the domestic abuse started. After some long trials and tribulations, Jyothi manages to get her hands on Dhruv after he gets arrested for an attempted murder charge on Soumya while paragliding with her. In the subsequent court case, Jyothi herself takes the stand and nails Dhruv down.
Do Patti Ending: Was Dhruv Sood Framed?
After Dhruv’s court case ends with him being handed out a thirteen-year sentence, the story seems to reach a natural conclusion as the bad guy gets what he deserves. However, ‘Do Patti’ reveals in classic fashion that, as is the case with any story involving twins, there is a bigger conspiracy brewing underneath it all. The big twist involves Dhruv’s attempted murder and how the whole event played out in reality. As it turns out, on the day of Holi, when Dhruv and Soumya went out paragliding, the twin sisters exchanged places, and it was actually Shailee who went up with Dhruv. Subsequently, she unbuckled her harness and acted as if Dhruv was trying to kill her, thereby placing him under arrest and charging him with attempted murder.
As Dhruv’s physical torture of Soumya was getting so severe, Shailee was finding it difficult to ignore what was happening to her sister. When she walked into the God’s Gift store one night, she witnessed Soumya injuring herself and talking in a delusional tone. The alarming nature of her mental degradation forced Shailee to take action somehow and help her sister in bringing Dhruv to justice. Even though the twins had been at each other’s throats throughout the narrative, the domestic abuse being suffered by Soumya compelled Shailee to help in any way she could. However, the problem was that Dhruv was so well connected politically owing to his father’s position that it was nearly impossible to bring him to justice without bending a few rules here and there.
Therefore, the two sisters constructed a meticulous plan that utilized their identical nature to frame Dhruv in an attempted murder plot. Although Soumya could have gone up with Dhruv herself, the task of unbuckling her harness would have proven to be too much for her because of her fear of heights. To circumvent the problem, Shailee took her place on Holi during a switch at the God’s Gift store. Soumya convinced Dhruv to stop over at the shop under the ruse of picking up her inhaler before heading to Valley View Point. There, the twins quickly took each other’s place and went about the plan as smoothly as possible. They again switched back inside the police station before the medical tests were done on Soumya, and her DNA showed up on the record. Thus, it created an airtight case for their innocence.
Why Does Vidya Rescind the Reopening of the Case?
Once Vidya figures out the truth behind Soumya and Shailee’s plot, she confronts the latter at their residence. She informs them that she will not stop until the real perpetrators are brought to justice, as that is in her nature. However, Shailee pleads with the officer by telling her that had she and Soumya not gone through with the plot to trap Dhruv, he would have ended up killing Soumya through repeated assaults on her body. It creates a moral dilemma for the protagonist, who has thus far always been wedded to the idea of the law and puts it above anything else in her life, including her own brother, whom she jailed previously. Still, Jyothi decides to go through with it but ultimately rescinds the reopening of the case at the last moment as the second court battle is about to take off.
The reasons for stepping back and allowing the real criminals to escape are layered in the dynamics of the story, even though it goes against the very fabric of Jyothi’s character. From the beginning, the fiery officer is portrayed as someone who is willing to chase down any lead or possible clue until she gets what she wants and brings it to light for everyone to see. In the case of Dhruv Sood, the protagonist takes a similar stance as she discovers what the sisters actually did to trap the businessman’s son. Her dedication to the law crumbles slightly as she starts weighing the pros and cons of what happened and whether letting Dhruv out would ultimately be a good choice. It forces her to rethink her position and look at the situation from another angle, the human side of things.
Context is also important when discussing why Jyothi allows the case to rest. As she knows the situation of the two sisters and how they became enemies following their mother’s death, the protagonist has a clearer picture of their family dynamics better than anyone else. However, she also learns that the twins’ lives were ripped apart because their mother was a victim of domestic abuse. Now, the same cycle was repeating itself, with Dhruv beating Soumya on a regular basis. The generational passing of domestic abuse from mother to daughter forces Jyothi to wonder whether she should add to the woes of the siblings, who had already suffered enough. On the contrary, Dhruv has charges of violent conduct levied against him elsewhere, which means he is a repeat offender of sorts.
Do Soumya and Shailee Reconcile?
Throughout the narrative, Soumya and Shailee are at each other’s throats because of a grudge from their childhood. Following the death of their mother, Shailee witnessed how her sister, who was constantly sick, was given special treatment by Ammaji and her father while she was shunned. Eventually, the two sisters came to loggerheads, and their father was forced to separate them by sending Shailee away to a boarding school. It engendered a feeling of extreme rivalry between the pair, with Shailee being the more competitive of the two. Later, when Dhruv starts showing interest in Soumya, her twin sister arrives back in Devipur to steal his attention away from her. However, despite their many constant battles, the two manage to reconnect at the end as they realize what really tore them apart and how much they still love each other.
Dhruv’s constant physical beatings of Soumya force Shailee to look at what is happening to her sister and put her animosity behind her. As she starts realizing the type of monster Soumya has married, Shailee becomes a supportive sister instead of an antagonistic force trying to tear her life apart. It all becomes even more lucid when both sisters start remembering what happened in their childhood and how their mother also died as a victim of abuse. Thus, inadvertently, it highlights how their so-called competitive nature was created because of a terrible deed committed by their father against their mother. Before her death, Soumya and Shailee’s lives were always going well, and the two were like peas in a pod. However, it all changed in the aftermath.
In the movie’s final moments, the twins manage to spark their connection once more as they realize they are tied by more than just a bitter grudge. It takes a horrible monster like Dhruv to finally cause the divide between Soumya and Shailee to drop, but drop it does. In fact, Shailee even expresses how proud she is of her twin sister during the opening parts of the second court battle. She says that unlike her mother, who failed to fight back, her sister had decided to take the cudgel of war and fight against Dhruv’s domestic abuse. Their happy ending gets even rosier when Jyothi is moved by Shailee’s speech and decides to close the reopening of the case. Therefore, not only do the twins manage to get over their differences, but they also get away scot-free for framing Dhruv.
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