Kannur Squad 2023

George Martin, Mammootty leads the Kannur Squad, a tight-knit team of CPO officers who set out to track a powerful political goon in the Kannur-Virajpet forest. They corner their target, but a chilling discovery changes the case: a stranger is found hanging in the woods. The official ruling calls it suicide, yet George suspects murder and presses for the truth. The investigation threads its way from the forest to Coimbatore, where the squad uncovers that the supposed suicider was in fact murdered. The trail points to Murugan, a lorry driver, but the deeper motive points to a web of deceit and personal gain. The case slowly reveals that Murugan’s wife Vanaja and her nephew Rakesh were pulled into a plot that left Murugan’s life more complicated than anyone realized. As the pieces start to fit, a separate cloud descends—the squad member Jayan is implicated in a bribery scandal involving the sand mafia, and with that, the Kannur Squad is disbanded, at least for now, leaving the big questions unresolved and the players scattered.

In 2017, a rich NRI Abdul Wahab is robbed and killed in Kasaragod, reigniting interest in the Kannur Squad. SP Manu Needhi Cholan, Kishore despite the shadow of that bribery scandal, brings the squad back together to pursue this case. The investigation quickly zeroes in on Riyas, Deepak Parambol, who reveals a murky past: he once worked at a hotel in Qatar and had crossed paths with Ameer Shah and Zulfiqar Ali, who are hungry for money to fund a new venture. Riyas’ account hints at a network that includes Wahab’s killer crew, and the trail widens to Ameer Shah, Arjun Radhakrishnan, and Zulfiqar Ali, Druvan, who along with Hathoda, Resh Lamba, and Bambiha, Nalneesh Neel, move in a dangerous circle of robberies and covert business deals. The squad’s pursuit spans cities, and they learn that Ameer and Zulfiqar had reached out to the Shiju circle, as S.P. Sreekumar plays Shiju, who provides a crucial but changing account of their whereabouts.

From Mumbai to Faizabad, the hunt intensifies. The crew traces a sequence of clues—the two men’ s calls, the hospital and kidney-stone detail, and a key meeting that points toward a broader plot tied to an ivory export scheme stretching into Kerala, Karnataka, and beyond. Yogesh Yadav, a UP constable played by Ankith Madhav, becomes an essential ally, guiding the team through local bottlenecks and giving them a foothold in unfamiliar territory. The chase leads the Kannur Squad to Bhubaneswar, then to the small towns of Tikri and Payagpur, where they finally corner the conspirators on a moving train. The group is captured on the rails with a tense, high-stakes confrontation, and the truth about their robberies—woven into a larger attempt to establish an ivory export trade across borders—is laid bare. Pawan, Manohar Pandey, provides a pivotal testimony that cements the case and ties together the disparate threads of the investigation.

The final act unfolds with a coordinated cross-border effort. The Kannur Squad, aided by the Sashastra Seema Bal, closes in on Ameer and Zulfiqar at a forest near the India-Nepal border. The arrest is swift and decisive, and the two men are brought back to Kerala to stand trial alongside the rest of the mission’s captives. After a long and taxing pursuit, the operation ends on a note of relief and closure, with the team bowing out of the case while acknowledging the support they received from Yogesh Yadav and his team. The mission’s arc—rooted in graft, revenge, and the legal fight to reclaim justice—remains a stark reminder of the costs of crime and the persistence of a squad that never gave up on the truth.