Inspector Rishi follows a police officer’s investigation into a series of serial killings, suspected to be the work of a forest spirit. The series is now streaming on Prime Video.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
When a wildlife photographer, Robert, is murdered in Thaenkaadu Forest, Crime Branch Inspector Rishi is sent to Thaenkaadu to investigate.
Sub-inspectors Ayyanar and Chitra will be assisting him, but Rishi, with his no-nonsense attitude and unconventional methods, makes it hard for them to like him.
The cause of Robert’s death was cardiac arrest, and his body was found wrapped in a cocoon, surrounded by poisonous flowers.
However, there is no physical evidence found at the crime scene, and there is no trace of poison found in Robert’s blood.
Rishi’s investigation leads him to a waiter named Abdul, who was with Robert on the night of his murder. Abdul claims that Robert was killed by Vanaratchi, the forest spirit.
Vanaratchi is said to wear red clothes and have horns on her head. Strangely, Robert is not the only one who has seen her; two beat officers also come across her.
Rishi starts working closely with Sathya, a range officer, and Irfan, a forester. He comes to believe that Robert’s death is part of a series of killings that have been ongoing or have just begun.
Upon questioning the DFO about deaths in the forest, he learns that five years ago, a truck driver named Bala was killed in an accident after losing control of his vehicle.
Rishi and his team then meet with Bala’s wife in search of answers but find none. Soon after, a man named Ekambaram is taken by Vanaratchi from his house and killed in a manner similar to Robert’s.
Ekambaram’s pregnant wife sees Vanaratchi and miscarries. The insects that weaved the cocoon around his body are found inside Ekambaram’s body.
An entomologist tells Rishi’s team that these insects are called webspinners, and they cannot be trained by humans to weave the cocoons into which the victims were wrapped.
Rishi and Ayyanar will now be staying in Thaenkaadu to investigate. Sathya assigns a beat officer named Kathy to help them.
Kathy was one of the officers who saw Vanaratchi, but, like Rishi, she refuses to believe in the spirit’s existence.
Another murder with the same MO takes place, and this time, Rishi finds a statue of Vanaratchi at the house of the victim, Rathinam. The statue was never bought by his family.
Rishi’s team searches the house of Mangai, the woman who sells the statues, and finds a Vanaratchi costume, leading to Mangai becoming their lead suspect in the case.
However, Mangai turns out to be a theatre artist who is playing Vanaratchi in an upcoming show. The police do not have enough evidence against her.
They are forced to let her go when Kathy, who has started falling in love with Rishi, and another officer are attacked in the forest by Vanaratchi.
Rishi manages to save Kathy’s life, but he still does not believe that a supernatural entity is involved. He then tells Kathy about his past.
Rishi was once engaged to a girl named Viji. Their relationship was toxic, and he found it difficult to get out of it.
One day, during an operation, Viji unexpectedly came to see him. She ignored his warnings and recklessly approached Rishi, resulting in both of them getting shot.
While Viji died, Rishi survived, but not without losing an eye in the process. It has been three years since Viji’s passing, but Rishi is still haunted by her ghost.
He believes that what he sees is not Viji’s ghost, but rather his own mind conjuring her, much like the people who claim to have seen Vanaratchi.
Rishi now wants to find a connection between the victims, so Ayyanar is tasked with following Bala’s wife, who leads him to a truck driver.
The driver is found smuggling tiger skin and elephant tusks. It turns out that Bala used to smuggle the same goods for poachers who are part of a large network.
When he refused to continue working for them, they threatened his family, resulting in Bala threatening to go to the police. Shortly after, Bala died.
Sathya had suspected the presence of poachers in the forest, and now he has the opportunity to catch them. He, along with Irfan, hides the confiscated items to lure them.
As a result, the poachers kidnap Sathya and Irfan. Eventually, Rishi’s team finds them, but unfortunately, Irfan does not survive.
While everyone assumes that the poachers are responsible for the serial killings, Rishi has his doubts. He continues his investigation to find any potential connections between the victims.
His team then comes to know that Robert was harming the animals in the forest to get good pictures and Ekambaram was illegally cutting down acres and acres of trees.
As they know that Bala and Rathinam worked with the poachers, the connection between the victims becomes clear: they all harmed the forest.
At the same time, strange incidents, such as a village girl named Thulasi getting possessed by Vanaratchi, continue to occur.
One late night, Rishi catches sight of Vanaratchi and follows her into the forest. He is unable to move when he comes face to face with the spirit.
However, he is not harmed by the spirit. He wakes up in the forest the next morning. This incident makes Rishi question his beliefs.
The spirit’s next victim is the poacher who kidnapped Sathya and Irfan. As he was hiding in a cave, Rishi and his team explore the cave for clues.
They discover human skeletons in the cave, and a former DFO tells them that the remains belong to the people of an indigenous tribe called the Kaanagar.
The Kaanagar took care of the forest for hundreds of years before they were asked to move under a tribal relocation scheme some twenty years ago.
The Kaanagar refused and staged protests. When their demands went unheard, they resorted to a ritual to summon Vanaratchi, culminating in mass suicide.
Their remains remained untouched within the cave due to its toxic atmosphere, inducing hallucinations in those who entered, as Chitra experienced firsthand.
The head of the Thaenkaadu panchayat, Mukhiya Kaliaperumal, tells Rishi that when the tribe refused to leave, they were falsely accused of illegal activities like poaching.
All this was done because there were plans to launch a mining project in the forest, which is rich in coal ore worth thousands of crores.
The tribe’s opposition to the project ultimately led to mass suicide, resulting in the project getting dropped.
As Rishi and his team come closer to solving the case, they see developments in their personal lives as well.
Ayyanar reconciles with his wife, Yamuna, who was forced out of his parents’ house because of their superstitions. He buys a separate house to start afresh with her.
After the woman she loves gets married to a man, Chitra comes out to Ayyanar. Rishi and Kathy confess their feelings to each other.
Ending explained:
Returning to the cave
The next person to be killed is the DFO, who was taking bribes and facilitated the launch of the mining project that was dropped twenty years ago.
The entomologist that the team had contacted previously has studied the insects and shares his new findings with Rishi.
The insects are attracted to the pheromones of a certain tree, which means that they can be made to target certain individuals with chemicals.
Rishi decides to go back to the cave on his own. He finds a small tunnel that leads to a chamber, where he sees a huge tree and numerous webspinners.
Rishi once again sees the ghost of Viji, but this time, he confronts it. He says all the things he wants to say to Viji and lets her go. Finally, the ghost disappears.
He then finds another exit. One can climb the tree to access the exit in the cave’s ceiling, leading him to suspect that not all the people of the Kaanagar tribe are dead.
How were the victims killed?
Rishi consults Yamuna, whose father is an expert in herbal plants, in deciphering the drawings found in the Kaanagar cave.
Yamuna informs the team that the drawings depict rare herbs found only in Thaenkaadu. Only the Kaanagar knew the location, the timing, and the method to obtain these herbs.
The drawings also include formulas and instructions to make medicines that the tribe made using these herbs, which confirms Rishi’s suspicions.
He believes that the survivors of the mass suicide are behind the serial killings. They are using these herbs to make medicines and sedatives to paralyze the victims.
They induce cardiac arrests to murder the victims. The medicines and sedatives were never detected in toxicology because the herbs used to make them are unknown and undocumented substances.
The murderers also use the pheromones secreted by the roots of the tree, which Rishi discovered in the cave, to attract webspinners that then weave cocoons around the bodies.
The killers
Rishi comes to the conclusion that some of the Kaanagar children escaped the chamber where the mass suicide took place through the exit he found.
They are the ones committing these murders to protect the forest. Rishi believes that they will also target the mine workers to stop coal mining, for which their people sacrificed their lives.
Rishi, Ayyanar, and Chitra go to the mine to save the mine workers. As expected, the mine workers are attacked.
While Ayyanar and Chitra rescue them, Rishi attempts to find another way out of the mine. When Rishi is alone, the killers paralyze him.
The killers turn out to be none other than Sathya, Kathy, Thulasi, Mangai, and Abdul. However, Rishi had suspected this well.
He knew that the killers were working closely with his team, which is why he only shared his findings with Ayyanar, Yamuna, and Chitra.
He had also met Kaliaperumal, who had confessed that he was the one who helped those children after they escaped from the cave.
He kept their identities a secret and put them in an orphanage. With time, all of them, except Kathy, were adopted.
Sathya reveals to Rishi that four years ago, they all reunited because Sathya decided to protect the forest by killing all those who harmed it.
They dressed up as Vanaratchi and came up with the perfect plan to get away with murders. They deliberately left eyewitnesses to evoke the fear of the spirit in people.
The guardian of the forest
Sathya plans to kill Rishi, who knows everything, and Kathy aids him without hesitation. However, what they do not know is that Rishi has the antidote.
Rishi and his team had found the group’s hideout, where Yamuna came across the antidote to the sedative. She gave it to Rishi, Ayyanar, and Chitra.
Rishi survives because of the antidote. Rishi, Ayyanar, and Chitra then fight the killers and save the mine workers. While Sathya dies, the rest of the group is arrested.
However, the mystery of Bala’s death, which occurred a year before Sathya brought the group back together, eludes Rishi, Ayyanar, and Chitra.
Rishi thinks about the night he saw Vanaratchi. The spirit he met bore no resemblance to the group’s disguise, implying that Vanaratchi exists and protects the forest.
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