Direction – Deepti Kakkar, Fahad Mustafa
Production – Globalistan Films, IVS
Story – Fahad Mustafa
Starring – Loha Singh, Ritu Maheshwari
Music – Indian Ocean (Amit Kilam and Rahul Ram), Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum, Varun Grover, GIngger Shankar
Release Date – 22nd Aug, 2014
Katiyabaaz is a Hindi documentary film directed by Deepti Kakkar, Fahad Mustafa and produced by Globalistan Films, IVS starring Loha Singh, Ritu Maheshwari.
The story is about Kanpur’s electricity crisis which results in load shedding. Power cuts there were up to 15 hours a day creating trouble to both residents and factories. This demand for electricity led to many local electricity thirves like Loha Singh. These people provide illegal power supply to people. He used plug into official supply through wires. These free connections caused financial losses to the power supply company, whose MD has to suffer and struggle very hard to fight this theft and local fixers.
This concept of this document drama film is based on the real events in Kanpur. The story is about such an electric thief, Loha Singh who is known as katiyabaaz. Katiya means the wire used to steal electricity and Katiyabaaz means the expert thief in stealing electricity. With so many hours of power cuts, people prefer to pay to thieves like Loha to get instant electricity instead of paying to the electricity company, KESCO (Kanpur Electricity Supply Company Limited) which fails to provide them electricity as required. Poor billing, lack of funds, soaring demands and inadequate power generation leads to KESCO in heavy losses.
KESCO’s MD, Ritu Maheshwari tries her best to bring the situation under control and solve this issue to generate some good revenue again. She decides to take serious steps against perpetrators and during this phase, she faces many problems and challenges. So, will she be able to do what she wanted to? Did she solve this issue? To know the answers, you must watch it.
The film draws attention towards the reasons behind this critical crisis instead of just focusing on illegalities. Thus, it gives you the entire picture of such problems. Katiyabaaz one of those few social issue based film dared to come before us.
Verdict: The direction was sensitive and realistic. Katiyabaaz can definitely make you feel value for the time you spend to watch it. It’s going to show you the value of the most basic thing your city provides you.