Amazon Prime Video‘s ‘Stolen’ starts out as a mystery thriller, before quickly transitioning into a survival horror. The film, which marks the directorial debut of Karan Tejpal, tells the story of Gautam Bansal (Abhishek Banerjee), whose brother, Raman, is a witness to the kidnapping of Jhumpa’s 5-month-old daughter Champa. Due to her impoverishment, the case is not taken seriously, and Raman and his reluctant brother Gautam take matters into their own hands. However, as the narrative is misconstrued online, false news blaming them goes viral. The trio must survive a brutal mob lynching, get to the truth of Champa’s parentage, and rescue her from a cruel fate.
Stolen is Based on a Real Case of Mob Lynching
Director Karan Tejpal expressed in an interview that the primary inspiration for the narrative was the real-life lynching that occurred in Assam’s Karbi Anglong area in 2018. The filmmaker added that the incident traumatized him, spurring him into the research that would take shape in the form of ‘Stolen.’ According to local police reports, the villagers of Karbi had been on edge due to the spread of a rumor claiming that five child-lifters, or khupadhoras, from Bihar, were on a kidnapping spree and had entered Karbi village.
This fear continued to spread through WhatsApp, Facebook posts, and local word of mouth, making the villagers extremely suspicious of strangers. The rumors were largely precautionary and centered around when they emerged, how they operated, and so on. One of the rumors was about the stereotypes around their deviant appearance, which included long, braided hair. Coincidentally, this detail also applied to Nilotpal Das, an audio engineer who visited the hills on June 8, 2018, along with his friend Abhijeet Nath, a digital artist.
When Nilotpal Das and Abhijeet Nath stopped on their way back from the local waterfall to ask for directions, a group of villagers from Panjuri, Kacharigaon in Karbi grew suspicious and began targeting them. The situation quickly became violent, with the numbers rapidly rising into a mob of over 200 people. Nath and Das were dragged out of their car and tied up. In a widely circulated video recording of the event, a bleeding Das can be seen pleading for his life, explaining that he is Assamese. This request, however, went unheard, as the mob then proceeded to brutally beat them to death.
This incident led to a national outcry for justice, with mass street protests demanding answers. The police launched a massive investigation, producing a chargesheet of around 800 pages and arresting over 40 suspects, including those responsible for spreading false information online. However, since there was insufficient evidence, most of the assailants were released on bail. The families of Nath and Das continue to seek justice for the loss of innocent lives that occurred that day.
Stolen Explores the Horrors of Misinformation and Viral Culture
In the film, the initial skirmish, in which Raman is mistaken as the kidnapper, is filmed by an unknown person and is spread in the local Youth Watch Group through WhatsApp, labeling the brothers Gautam and Raman and Jhumpa as child kidnappers and changing their lives. The forest authorities, claiming to know the viral news from “trusted sources,” almost implicate the trio as kidnappers. During the mob attack fueled by the fake news, Raman is shot and severely wounded, and Gautam is brutally beaten. The police officer’s words from the witness scene are: “Around here, it’s fisting before facts.”
Fake news and misinformation warp people’s fear and impulsive emotions, turning misunderstandings into harrowing incidents. The real-life deaths of Abhijeet and Nilotpal, which inspired the movie, are one of the most shocking and chilling manifestations of media manipulation and viral culture. Myths and imagination, communal fear and hatred, find a new life in the digital space, where rumors can easily spread. Because Nilotpal happened to have the imagined characteristics of a child-lifter, “long-braided hair and shiny eyes,” the villagers of Panjuri labeled him as a kidnapper and turned into an aggressive mob group, destroying two innocent lives as well as becoming killers within their own home.
The person who began this chain of rumors and the ultimate violent eruption remains anonymous behind the digital media cover. Several such lynching incidents have occurred due to the spread of rumors on WhatsApp, becoming so common that they are now termed “WhatsApp Lynchings.” In this instance, the villagers of Karbi Anglong, suspicious of outsiders and acting on a strong insider mentality, quickly responded to the rumors with violent behavior. The anonymous instigator found other anonymous aids to spread the message, creating a network that held no accountability, just as the people in the mob escaped accountability due to the implausibility of the blame.
A Real Village in Rajasthan Doubles Up as the Fictional Bansdola
A significant chunk of the movie takes place in Bansdola, a seemingly quiet, quaint village that erupts into chaos and violence following the arrival of Gautam and Raman. The two are advised to drive their way there to survive the horde of mobs that were chasing them on bikes. While the village itself is fictional, its scenes were shot near Pushkar, Rajasthan. As director Tejpal says in an interview with Scroll, “We shot the film close to where I grew up, in Pushkar, although it isn’t set there or any other place in Rajasthan. I was looking for particular things in the locations, and I found them in Pushkar.”
Within the village, another major location is the Utthaan Rehabilitation Center, a place our main characters had been looking for, as it was their key to locating Achhelal, Surili’s accomplice in kidnapping infants. Like the village, this is also fictional, modeled after real rehabilitation centers in Rajasthan. The entire first sequence of the movie, which takes place in a railway station, was seemingly shot in Pushkar Railway Station. Other exciting settings, including the Cursed Manor, the Kasuni Kothi, and the hilly rock terrain in the chase sequence, are all located in or around Pushkar.
The Ending of Stolen Differs from the Original Incident
While the movie is strongly inspired by the Karbi Lynching, it does bear many differences from the actual incident. To begin with, the narrative focuses on the kidnapping of a single character named Champa, the infant daughter of Jhumpa. The actual incident, however, was not a response to one single kidnapping but the paranoia around the kidnappers being active in the region. Similarly, the movie’s main characters are two brothers, Gautam and Raman Bansal. The real-life victims, Nilotpal Das and Abhijeet Nath, were friends who worked in Mumbai and Goa, respectively.
The film’s subsequent investigation into the kidnapping is similarly fictional. The movie’s lynching sequences, while harrowing in their own right, are different from the real case. While Nath and Das were immediately tied down and beaten, the experience of Gautam and Raman in the narrative is spaced out; they run for their lives as the mob grows and chases them down at every step, going as far as shooting Raman. Jhumpa, the child’s mother, is also fictional, and her involvement as the third victim in the lynching has no real-life resemblance.
The most significant difference between real and reel is in their conclusions. In the film, Gautam survives the ordeal and is successful in preventing the child from being illegally sold off in the hospital. His brother, while gravely injured, is nonetheless safe and hospitalized. None of these things happened on June 8, 2018. There was no police intervention or hospitalization. Nath and Das were brutally and fatally attacked, subsequently succumbing to their injuries. While ‘Stolen’ ends on a hopeful, bittersweet note, the real incident of Karbi Anglong serves as a reminder of the vulnerability of both media narratives and life itself.
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