These lines from Vishal Bhardwaj's Haider, talk about the essential opaqueness of a fraught situation and the inability to distinguish between certainties and doubts, and truth and falsehood. They might have applied to the Kashmir issue. But the words also lie at the heart of the Rashomon-like Batla House encounter case of September 2008.

There is a scene in the film Batla House where John Abraham, playing valorous policeman Sanjay Kumar, is listening to someone on the phone. Abraham's attempt at being stoic renders him indistinguishable from a still photograph. Nikkhil Advani's film often suffers from the same problem. There's promise in the subject of a police encounter scrutinised with extreme cynicism by the rest of the nation, and it builds toward an engaging finale, but Advani stands still too long, meandering through wooden actors and limber item-dancers in subplots that miss the point.

The other Hindi film of this week is also 'inspired' by real-life: the 2008 encounter at Batla House in which two 'terrorists' were killed. Doubts about and around the shoot-out were raised at the time, and continue to cloud the event. But Bollywood is not interested in complexity, clearly. As far as Batla House is concerned, the cops were clearly in the right, and the group of young men holed out in that tiny flat were not 'students', as claimed, but armed members of the Indian Mujahideen (IM).

Batla House is a film based on the controversial Batla House Encounter that happened in 2008, where the Delhi Police was allegedly accused of cooking up a fake encounter case. In the opening scene of the film, special officers are seen discussing plans to capture operatives of the Indian Mujahideen, prime suspects in plotting bomb blasts that shook New Delhi on September 13, 2008.

Law enforcement officer seems to be John Abraham's favorite onscreen persona. A cursory look at IMDB will tell you that in the last decade, he has played some variation of this character in eight films, which range from Force to Romeo Akbar Walter to Satyameva Jayate. In the last one, he is a vigilante who kills corrupt cops but once again, the motive is to uphold the law and the Indian flag. And John doesn't seem to be tiring of this character - Satyameva Jayate 2 and Dishoom Again are in production.

For the uninitiated, the movie is based on the real-life encounter case named as Operation Batla House, which happened in 2008 in Delhi. The movie starts showing ACP Sanjay Kumar struggling with his personal and professional life. After a heated argument with wife Nandita (Mrunal Thakur), a journalist, he moves to a place called Batla House in which he has to lead a mission. Things go sideways when one of Sanjay's officers, KK (Ravi Kishan), denies a direct order and engages with the students at the crime scene.

BATLA HOUSE is the story of an upright cop caught in a sticky situation. The year is 2008. The Indian Mujahideen has conducted a series of blasts across the country. Their latest attack is in the capital city, Delhi, on September 13. ACP Sanjay Kumar (John Abraham) is having trouble in his marriage with Nandita (Mrunal Thakur). On September 19, he is informed by his team that the terrorists responsible for this blast are holed up in a flat in L-18, Batla House in the Okhla locality of the city.

John Abraham plays DCP Sanjay Kumar who leads the encounter against terrorists suspected to have been hidden inside Batla House. He successfully terminates them but is later suspected of doctoring a take encounter. How he fights to clear his name forms the crux of the film. The film is based on the infamous Batla House encounter case which took place on September 19, 2008.

Batla House is a film based on true events. The film is inspired by the controversial case of Batla House firings that took place in 2008 in Jamia Nagar, Delhi. It was one of the most intriguing cases as it raised many brows on Delhi police and ACP Sanjeev Kumar who led the operation. Many questions were raised about the intent of the op.

Nikkhil Advani's Batla House, based on a screenplay by Ritesh Shah, claims to explore the role played by doubt in a police investigation, but it is loaded with biases. Make that singular: the movie is a paean to Sanjeev Kumar Yadav, a member of the Delhi Police Special Cell team that conducted the Batla House operation in the capital's Jamia Nagar locality in September 2008.

With Batla House, Nikkhil Advani takes charge of a script by Ritesh Shah that is "inspired by" real life events. In 2008, the Batla House encounter in Delhi became controversial with the public and media questioning the police's intentions and rigour. The opening credits of Batla House inform us that Sanjeev Kumar Yadav and his wife were the "inspiration" for this film.

Based on the Batla House encounter that is officially known as Operation Batla House that took place on 19 September 2008, against Indian Mujahideen (IM) terrorists in Batla House locality in Jamia Nagar, Delhi. Two terrorists were killed while two other were arrested, one managed to escape. John Abraham plays DCP Sanjeev Kumar Yadav who headed the operation, Mrunal Thakur plays Nandita Yadav (Sanjeev Kumar's wife) and Ravi Kishan plays KK -the Police Inspector who attained martyrdom during the operation.

ACP Sanjay Kumar goes under intense scrutiny after his team conducts an operation killing two alleged IM operatives and arresting one at Batla House in Delhi. And there are two more who managed to escape and are on the run. While the media, activists and politicians allege it's a fake encounter will he be able to prove otherwise?

The Batla House hero, conjured up by screenwriter Ritesh Shah and director Nikkhil Advani, is a righteous cop refreshingly devoid of cocky certitudes. His pangs of guilt and self-doubt over the fallout of a controversial operation that he leads from the front set him apart from all those angry, invincible Bollywood policemen who go about their jobs of cleaning up the world without ever batting an eyelid.

Batla House claims to be an unbiased film by running a disclaimer during one of the important scenes involving two parties presenting their sides inside a courtroom. This seems awkward because the whole film has been told from the perspective of one of them. Soon, all our apprehensions about the film's stance come true and we are left wondering about the futility of such a disclaimer.