She came to be known simply as "Nirbhaya", the fearless one, and only a woman police officer could have cracked the case of her brutal gangrape on the night of December 16, 2012, within 72 hours, says actor Shefali Shah, in a hat tip to former Delhi Police DCP Chaya Sharma.
The dedication and conviction of the then deputy commissioner of police of South Delhi district was pivotal in the case of the gangrape and murder of the physiotherapy intern, who was assaulted on a cold December night in a moving bus by six men and died of her grievous injuries 13 days later in a Singapore hospital, said Shah.
Shah, 46, plays Vartika Chaturvedi, whose character is based on Sharma, in the upcoming Netflix series "Delhi Crime".
Everyone who has been on this project believes that if it wasn't a woman, the case probably would not have cracked in the span that it did. It was her intensity, passion and conviction that I will get them'.
All the case had was scattered leads but I don't think she let herself believe for a moment that it's not going to happen. All she wanted to do was crack the case in the fastest way possible, Shah told PTI in an interview.
The seven-part series, directed by Indian-Canadian filmmaker Richie Mehta, is inspired by and follows the investigation by Delhi Police to nab the six males who raped the 23-year-old in the national capital.
The series is not the first project to bring the highly publicised case on screen Leslie Udwin's 2015 documentary India's Daughter and Deepa Mehta-directed drama Anatomy of Violence (2016) have also dealt with the case, which led to a change in India's rape laws.
What separates Delhi Crime from its predecessors is that it explores the event based on police case files.
While the show dramatises the incident, it brings in the back stories of the cops, the condition of the police force, their power struggle with the bureaucracy and managing the scoop-hungry media.
Shah recalls struggling with feelings of anger and angst about the gangrape. Amidst the blame game, the biggest question in her mind was, "Who's there to protect us?"
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