Kanithan 2016

Gowtham Ramalingam [Atharvaa Murali] is an exceptionally bright TV journalist working at a small channel, and his family has long been intertwined with the world of media—from a Doordarshan news presenter father to a grandfather who once read the news on All India Radio. Despite having an engineering degree and strong academic credentials, he passionately pursues frontline reporting and secretly yearns to join the BBC. During a routine report, he crosses paths with Anu, Catherine Tresa, a colleague who shares his ambition and interest, and a genuine spark begins to grow between them as they navigate the pressures of the newsroom.

A professional milestone appears on the horizon when Gowtham receives an offer letter from the BBC. After a tense interview, he performs admirably and earns a place among the network’s hopefuls. His friends, including Anu, celebrate this hard-won achievement at the TV channel office, and for a moment it seems like his dream is within reach. Yet the celebration sours quickly when Gowtham is unexpectedly arrested on charges of cheating banks with forged documents and fake degree certificates—his own credentials among those under scrutiny. The accusation sends a shockwave through his life and casts doubt on everything he has worked for.

As he is taken to custody, a fellow graduate seated beside him makes a desperate decision and dies in a tragic accident, crushed by a speeding truck after falling from the police vehicle. This horrific moment makes Gowtham realize he has become a pawn in a vast, well-orchestrated scam that corrupts countless people through fake academic records. His neighbor, Karunakaran Balaji, a lawyer, along with Senthil, his friend and colleague, and Anu, rally to secure his release. With their support, Gowtham learns that his BBC rejection was not a random setback but a consequence of the same fraudulent network that forged degrees and used them to manipulate loans and admissions.

Determined to expose the conspiracy, Gowtham joins forces with Balaji, Senthil, and Anu to uncover the truth behind the fake certificates. He recalls a crucial clue from the police station: the forged documents used to obtain loans carried the same photograph as Gowtham’s genuine degree. This leads them to a consultancy firm in Anna Nagar, where they discover a locked room that hides a much larger cache of counterfeit credentials. They force their way inside, uncovering certificates that link to the major universities—the blueprints of Anna University, the University of Madras, the Madras Christian College, and several others—carefully hidden in the ceiling.

The team extracts the counterfeit certificates and broadcasts a bold message to multiple TV channels, including Gowtham’s own, demanding the public exposure of every name tied to the scam. The revelation unsettles Thura Sarkar, the mastermind behind the operation, and his sons, who fear the blowback of the exposure. To misdirect the investigation and protect his operation, Thura tries to manipulate the situation, but Gowtham’s plan unfolds as he publicly names a scapegoat to bait Thura into overreaching. The strategy pays off: Balaji’s name is safeguarded just in time, and Gowtham’s group fights back, using a hidden camera to document the criminals at work.

In a daring move, Gowtham infiltrates the scam by posing as an applicant for a fake degree and records the criminals with microcamera-enabled spectacles. Thura relentlessly hunts for the source of the leak, but the evidence keeps piling up. The news goes on air, spreading like wildfire and forcing the scam into the open. Thura storms Gowtham’s channel office, taking Senthil and others hostage, but Gowtham calls him, revealing Senthil’s exact location and enabling a risky rescue. Anu is kidnapped by Thura’s son during the chaos, adding a personal stake to the confrontation.

With time running out, Gowtham and Senthil orchestrate a final gambit: a fake certificate applicant visit to Thura’s lair, captured on camera, which Gowtham broadcasts live while monitoring Thura’s movements. Thura arrives at the channel and sabotages the transmission terminal, but the feed is quickly re-enabled, and the incriminating footage goes public. A decisive moment follows as Gowtham delivers a swift kick that renders Thura unconscious, silencing him long enough for the authorities to step in. The scam is exposed, and Gowtham is celebrated for his courage and perseverance, reuniting with Anu and the rest of his friends.

In the aftermath, Thura lies in a vegetative state under tight police supervision as the legal process begins. A twist of irony arrives when a fake assistant doctor, posing as part of the medical team, administers the wrong medicine into Thura’s glucose drip. The error accelerates his decline, and the lead doctor confronts the assistant about whether he earned his status through a forged certificate. Thura ultimately dies, underscoring the grim irony that a person who helped perpetuate a system built on fake credentials becomes the casualty of the system’s own flaws. Through resilience, truth, and persistence, Gowtham’s efforts restore a sense of justice and reconnect him with Anu, while shining a light on the broader, troubling issue of counterfeit qualifications.