Dhootha follows a corrupt journalist being haunted by newspaper clippings containing descriptions of all the terrible fate that afflicts him and his loved ones before it does. The series is available to stream on Prime Video.
Sagar Varma Avuduri is a successful journalist and the Editor-in-chief of a new newspaper called Samachar.
However, corruption and greed have been the tenets of his career. One day, his perfect life comes crashing down as a newspaper predicting a horrible thing turns out to be incredibly accurate.
Thereafter, he starts getting similar newspaper clippings all of which depict and detail, through headlines, sketches, articles, and even crossword puzzles, deaths of his loved ones and other people in his vicinity.
His investigations ultimately lead him to the source of his misery, the one responsible for all those newspaper clippings, and it’s a ghost of someone from the past who was in the same profession as Sagar.
The Dhootha
Satya Murthy, a principled journalist in the 1960s, who published his newspaper covertly during the Freedom Movement such that it eluded British censorship, continues to do great work with his Dhootha Publication.
His great friend since long, the MLA Raghavayya, prepares for the upcoming election as one of the remaining politicians who still practice integrity.
However, his young rival Chakrapani, who’s fighting the election for the first time, conspires an evil plan with the police officer Ramana Ghosh and Satya Murthy’s trusted junior at Dhootha, Bhupati.
The betrayal
A few days before the election, Bhupati arranged tickets to Tripura for Satya Murthy and his family, since he had been wanting to go there with his wife and son for a long time.
Though he couldn’t vacation with the elections being so near, Murthy had to accept the tickets and go vacationing for a few days. In his absence, Bhupati takes over the publication at Dhootha.
However, he uses it to his advantage. Chakrapani uses Raghavayya’s housemaid, whom the politician and his family treat as one of their own, to change the latch at one of their doors, and later give them poisoned sweets.
After killing the maid, Chakrapani stages it to look like she committed suicide and forges a suicide letter as well. The letter speaks of Raghavayya’s family raping her, which forces her to take her own life.
Ramana Ghosh leads the charge on the investigations and skips over all due diligence. Chakrapani riles up the crowd against the MLA and his family.
He also alters the crime scene to look like the family committed mass suicide due to the guilt and shame they felt for what they did to the maid.
Meanwhile, at Dhootha, Bhupati prints the sensational news about the MLA and his family’s dark deeds. Murthy returns prematurely and is aghast to learn about the three men’s evil conspiracy.
Bhupati is the one he’s most enraged at since it was his duty as a journalist to uphold the journalistic principles and values that Murthy has lived by all his life. Bhupati figures out that Murthy knows about it all.
He, together with Chakrapani and Ramana Ghosh, kills Murthy at the lighthouse before he can print the truth with his old printing press kept there. Following his death, Murthy’s vengeful spirit remains in the mortal realm.
The revenge
Since that day, Murthy’s ghost haunts all journalists who abandon their values and principles. He punishes them most cruelly.
Satya Murthy haunts the corrupt journalists by printing the news of the terrible fate that awaits them and their loved ones.
One by one, all his victims become paranoid in their desperation to search for the next piece of newspaper so they can prevent the prediction written on it.
However, death comes for them all. Satya Murthy goes after his targets’ loved ones as well as anyone closely related/associated with them.
When the journalists can prevent these deaths, they’re driven to suicide, which, as they all figured out eventually, is the only way to prevent more deaths of their loved ones.
Once the journalist is dead, Murthy’s ghost stops going after their family and friends/colleagues.
Also Read: Dhootha summary and ending explained