Cop Films To Watch Before Meghna Gulzar's Daayra: Batla House, Talaash, Raat Akeli Hai And More

Bollywood has long been fascinated by the police officer as both investigator and enforcer. Some films have followed cops battling organised crime, while others have looked at what happens when an operation raises questions about procedure, evidence or the use of force. The result is a long line of crime films where the uniform is not always a symbol of uncomplicated justice.

That conversation returns with Daayra, the upcoming crime thriller directed by Meghna Gulzar and starring Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran. The film follows DCP Ajooni Kohli and DCP Raman Kumar, two police officers caught on opposing sides of a controversial encounter investigation. The trailer sets up a probe into an alleged planned encounter, bringing questions of justice, accountability and police procedure into the centre of the story.

Before Daayra brings its own version of the debate to the screen, here are nine Bollywood cop films worth revisiting:

Nana Patekar's Ab Tak Chhappan remains one of the most direct Bollywood explorations of the encounter specialist. Released in 2004, the Shimit Amin film follows Inspector Sadhu Agashe, a Mumbai police officer known for his record of encounter killings. The character was inspired by Mumbai Police officer Daya Nayak.

The film is less interested in turning Agashe into a conventional action hero than in examining the world he inhabits. His methods place him in a grey area between policing and extrajudicial violence, while the pressure surrounding his work eventually begins to affect his professional and personal life.

John Abraham-led Batla House takes its story from the controversial 2008 Batla House encounter in Delhi. Directed by Nikkhil Advani, the 2019 film follows ACP Sanjay Kumar, a character based on police officer Sanjeev Kumar Yadav, as he deals with the aftermath of the operation.

The film moves beyond the gunfight itself. Its focus is on what happens afterwards, as questions are raised about the legitimacy of the operation and the officers involved face public and institutional scrutiny. It makes the encounter as much a battle over credibility as it is a police operation.

Apoovra Lakhia's Shootout at Lokhandwala fictionalises the 1991 Lokhandwala Complex shootout involving Mumbai Police and gangster Maya Dolas and his associates. Sanjay Dutt plays ACP Shamsher Khan, a character based on real-life police officer Aftab Ahmed Khan.

The film builds towards the massive confrontation at the Lokhandwala complex, but it also spends time on the questions surrounding the police operation. The officers have to answer allegations of excessive force while the film presents the encounter through the competing perspectives of the police, the media and those questioning their methods.

If Shootout at Lokhandwala looks at one of Mumbai’s most notorious gang encounters, Shootout at Wadala goes further back into the city’s encounter history.

The 2013 Sanjay Gupta film dramatises the life of gangster Manya Surve, played by John Abraham, and the police operation that eventually led to his death. The real incident took place on January 11, 1982 and is widely described as Mumbai Police’s first recorded encounter.

The film spends much of its runtime tracing Surve’s transformation from a college student into a feared gangster before bringing him into direct conflict with the police.

Naseeruddin Shah's Encounter: The Killing takes a more personal route into the subject. The 2002 crime drama follows Senior Inspector Sam Bharucha, who accidentally kills a young mobster during a police operation.

Instead of treating the encounter simply as a victory against crime, the film follows Bharucha as he becomes troubled by the death. His search for the dead man’s parents turns the story into an examination of guilt, responsibility and the human cost behind an encounter.

Rajkumar Santoshi's Khakee is not strictly an encounter film, but it belongs on this list for the way it places a group of police officers under pressure from both criminals and forces within the system.

Released in 2004, the film stars Amitabh Bachchan as DCP Anant Kumar Shrivastav, who is tasked with escorting suspected terrorist Iqbal Ansari from Chandangarh to Mumbai. The journey becomes increasingly dangerous after a former police officer, Yashwant Angre, played by Ajay Devgn, turns against the team.

With Akshay Kumar and Tusshar Kapoor also playing members of the police team, Khakee uses the road journey to explore loyalty, corruption, fear and the compromises that can come with being a police officer.

Reema Kagti's Talaash offers a quieter version of the cop thriller. Aamir Khan plays Inspector Surjan Singh Shekhawat, who investigates the mysterious death of film star Armaan Kapoor after his car plunges into the sea.

What initially looks like an accident gradually becomes more complicated. Surjan follows a trail through Mumbai's underbelly while dealing with the unresolved grief surrounding the death of his young son. His investigation is therefore tied closely to his own emotional state, giving the film a more introspective take on the familiar police procedural.

Honey Trehan's Raat Akeli Hai moves away from Mumbai’s encounter culture and into the world of a small-town investigation. Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays Inspector Jatil Yadav, who is called to investigate the murder of a wealthy and politically connected family patriarch in Uttar Pradesh.

The 2020 Netflix crime thriller turns the investigation into a slow unravelling of family secrets. Almost everyone in the house has something to hide, leaving Jatil to work through conflicting statements, buried relationships and social hierarchies. The film is as interested in the people surrounding the crime as it is in solving it.

Pradeep Sarkar's Mardaani brings another dimension to the Bollywood cop film through Rani Mukerji's Shivani Shivaji Roy, a Senior Inspector with the Mumbai Crime Branch.

The 2014 film begins with Shivani investigating a child-trafficking network after a young girl she had previously rescued goes missing. Her investigation leads her towards Karan Rastogi, a young criminal mastermind running a trafficking operation.

Unlike the encounter-driven films on this list, Mardaani focuses more closely on police investigation and the determination of an officer who refuses to let the case disappear into the system. It also establishes Shivani as a cop whose personal commitment becomes inseparable from the case.

With Daayra, the focus now shifts back to the police encounter and the questions that follow when the people responsible for enforcing the law find themselves under investigation. Directed by Meghna Gulzar, the film stars Kareena Kapoor as DCP Ajooni Kohli and Prithviraj Sukumaran as DCP Raman Kumar. Daayra is scheduled to release in cinemas on September 18, 2026.