Dhootha follows a successful journalist named Sagar, who gets embroiled in an unbelievable series of events involving death, betrayal, and greed as mysterious newspaper clippings predict horrific events unfolding in his life. The series is currently streaming on Prime Video.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Sagar Varma, the new Chief Editor of ‘Samachar’ newspaper, finds a crossword puzzle at a dhaba that predicts his daughter’s dog’s death. Accurate down to the very second, the dog does die in a crash that happens in front of his eyes.
Soon, his old friend and now someone who holds a grudge against him for backstabbing him, popular journalist Charles commits suicide in front of Sagar, with a newspaper clipping in his hand that depicted this horrifying scene before it happened.
Police Detective Shenoy takes the helm of the investigations and traces the gun Charles used in a smuggling operation in which the same lorry driver was involved who crashed into Sagar’s car.
At Sagar’s demand, policeman Ajay Ghosh interrogates Koti, the driver, even after he’s let go in the absence of any incriminating evidence. He tortures him to the point of his presumed death.
He dumps the body at Sagar’s farmhouse where the journalist takes care of it properly and buries it, before bleaching the crime scene and finding another newspaper clipping predicting Koti’s death.
Sagar and Ajay Ghosh find a clue in the clippings while Kranthi and Ranga find a connection between Ghosh and Sagar, as well as the farmhouse, where they dig to find a corpse but find a carcass instead.
Meanwhile, Sagar faces tragedy as he fails to prevent a horrifying fate awaiting his daughter, just like it’s described in a newspaper clipping.
He chases down a mysterious person who later hands him evidence that a journalist like him gathered over years, unfurling a whole another chapter that explains the nature of Sagar’s suffering of late.
Sagar visits Dhootha publication in an attempt to unravel the mystery behind Sathyamurthy’s book.
He comes to learn about his story which delves into a horrifying past incident that was buried by powerful people, starting a chain of journalists’ deaths and the deaths of their loved ones.
Sagar finds out the one thing that can prevent his wife and unborn child from dying, before leaving a last message to Kranthi and Priya.
However, he soon learns that Priya’s death might be inevitable, which leads him to Dhootha’s printing press where he asks what he must do to save his loved ones.
He gets his answer at a speech during a convocation, he confesses his sins and kills a politician he’s been in cahoots with for a long.
Priya survives a near-death as Kranthi also solves the case of her grandfather and his family that was closed shut long ago, as Dhootha season 1 concludes.
Dhootha ending explained in detail:
Who is behind the newspaper clippings?
The newspaper clippings that contain headlines and articles of people’s deaths before they happen, begin haunting Sagar Varma on one odd night while returning home from the launch of the ‘Samachar’ newspaper.
It’s later revealed that these newspaper clippings have also been haunting Charles, a former friend and colleague of his. Charles kills himself by shooting himself in his mouth, holding a clipping that depicts this scene with horrifying accuracy.
Sagar goes digging around and sees that one letter is always inverted in all these prints. He goes to a public library where he goes through all the old local newspapers from the past until he comes across one that contains the exact pattern of this inverted letter.
It led him to Dhootha publication, which was run by Sathyamurthy, who reportedly went missing in 1962. His son, who is Chandra Murthy, had been a part of Sagar’s team until he found out that Sagar was a sellout, at which point he resigned.
Chandra Murthy’s grandfather Satya Murthy founded Dhootha Publication. He mysteriously went missing one day in 1962, but in reality, he was killed and now his ghost haunts corrupt journalists like Sagar and kills their loved ones until they’re driven to suicide.
What happened to Satya Murthy?
Satya Murthy was a journalist of strong values and principles. He had kept the flame of principled journalism alive and burning during the Freedom Movement.
His close friend since long, MLA Raghavayya was one of the remaining politicians in a world of politics and journalism that was quickly getting polluted with corruption and greed.
Bhupati Varma Avuduri, a journalist and Satya Murthy’s most trusted junior at Dhootha Publications, convinces and sends Murthy and his family to a vacation to Tripura for three days, during election time.
This was the first election where Raghavayya was going to be contested by Chakrapani, a young politician who founded the Praja Vakku party. He was in cahoots with Bhupati to make sure he came to power.
Chakrapani manipulated Raghavayya’s maid, who was practically a family member, to get them all to eat sweets he sent for them, while she never suspected a thing.
She also removed a latch from one of the rooms’ doors and gave it to Chakrapani. He got its exact replica made out of iron and then got it attached to the door, by the maid. When the family all ate the sweet, they died of poisoning.
He then snuck in later at night carried all the bodies to one room, and staged all the family members’ mass suicides. He then killed the maid and forged a letter made to look like her suicide note.
In that, he wrote as the maid, that Raghavayya’s family raped her, which is why she committed suicide. Meanwhile, he had hung all the family members from many nooses in the room and locked the iron latch using a magnet.
He then riled up the masses against Raghavayya and led the enraged crowd to his house, where police officer Ramana Ghosh — an accomplice of Chakrapani and Bhupati — barged into the MLA’s home with police force.
It was made to look like the family committed mass suicide because of what they did to their maid. Chakrapani went on to win the election by default.
Before that, though, Satya Murthy returned and overheard the three men’s celebratory recap of their crimes.
Bhupati caught on to it and gathered his accomplices who all ambushed Satya Murthy at the Satyapatnam Lighthouse, where he’d kept a printing press from the Freedom Movement days, one which he begins using to expose the real truth.
However, before he can do that, he’s killed by the three men. After his death, his ghost lingers on and one by one, takes his revenge.
He doesn’t stop there though, as he keeps hunting down corrupt journalists like Bhupati Varma, politicians like Chakrapani, and police officers like Ramana Ghosh, until the very end of Dhootha.
What did Priya do?
Priya is Sagar’s wife and mother to their daughter Anjali and an unborn kid. Anjali has to pay the price of her father’s corruption and crime, as she’s killed in a freak accident after falling down the elevator shaft.
Priya is shown to be a loving wife and a seemingly innocent woman at the start of Dhootha. However, it’s soon revealed that she’s just as corrupt, if not more than her husband.
Priya’s friend Ashwin planned a fire at his hospital to get the insurance money. As a result, five kids died in the children’s ward. She helps him bury the truth by using her connections with the news channel MDs and gets them to keep this incident under wraps.
Sagar learns about it later on and realizes that even if he kills himself, his wife and unborn kid will still be killed because of her crimes.
Later on, Sagar’s personal assistant Amrutha’s husband, Tapas, comes to seek revenge on Priya, just as Amrutha had asked him to, as her last wish before killing herself.
Amrutha killed herself after getting crushed with the weight of her guilt, as she cheated with Sagar and got pregnant with his kid, who died when she got beaten up by Tapas after he learned about her cheating.
Amrutha lost all hope only after seeing how morally deficient Sagar was, who immediately cut his ties with her upon learning he impregnated her, even expressing his relief at the news of the unborn kid dying.
In the final episode of Dhootha, Tapas goes to kill Priya, but she successfully evades death as he is killed by electrocution.
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