Virupaksha 2023

In 1979, in the remote village of Rudravanam, Venkata Chalapathy Kamal Kamaraju and his wife Kamakshi Bhaskarla are lynched by the villagers who fear their eerie black-magic rituals have caused a string of deaths. As she dies, Chalapathy’s wife curses the village with destruction in twelve years. Their son, Bhairava Ravi Krishna, is spared and sent to an orphanage by the village head, Harishchandra Prasad Rajiv Kanakala.

Fast-forward to 1991, a week after the mysterious disappearance of Siddhayya, Anasuyamma Niharika returns to Rudravanam with her son, Surya Sai Durgha Tej and her nephew to donate land for a school and attend the annual carnival honoring Goddess Modamamba. Surya’s encounter with Nandini Samyuktha sparks a tender, if hesitant, romance that lingers through the unfolding crisis.

During the festival, Siddhayya—who has developed a severe pox after being mauled by a supernatural crow—returns to the village temple and dies in the inner sanctum, a sacrilege that chills the air. The head priest declares the village desecrated and orders an eight-direction lockdown that forces a grim silence over Rudravanam. Surya and his family are allowed to leave since they have been away for twelve years, but Surya reenters the village to deliver medicine to Nandini, who suffers from convulsions and cannot leave for eight days.

Sudha [Soniya Singh], Nandini’s friend, attempts to elope with her lover, but tragedy strikes when he is killed in a railway accident and Sudha herself is later killed by a swarm of bees. Her death is kept hidden by anxious parents to avoid shame. The milkman Suri and Surya’s cousin, the village’s caretaker’s connect, are found dead under mysterious circumstances, deepening the sense that something ancient and malevolent is at work. Surya, aided by an RMP Doctor Koti, begins to piece together a brutal pattern: every victim glimpses a death before their own demise, and the curse passes along to the next target. An Aghora warns the villagers that their lockdown has made a dangerous mistake.

As the investigation deepens, Surya discovers Sudha’s body and deduces that Nandini is the next in the crosshairs. He saves her when she teeters on the brink of despair, and through a flood of fragments from the Chalapathy saga, he learns that Chalapathy’s past involved Atharvana Veda practices misunderstood by the village. Surya suspects Bhairava is orchestrating the killings all along.

The head priest presses for sacrifice, but Surya sedates Nandini and resolves to find another way. He tracks Bhairava’s whereabouts and learns that Bhairava fled the orphanage after paralysing its founder. With the help of the Aghora, Surya follows Bhairava to a cave, where he uncovers Bhairava’s belongings and the original village edict—a document that had been replaced by a counterfeit one. In a devastating twist, Surya concludes that Sudha’s lover Kumar is actually Bhairava, with a village insider aiding him in carrying out the curse. He also uncovers that Nandini’s sacrifice is part of a broader plot to destroy Rudravanam.

As Surya races to halt the looming ritual, resistance from nearby villages—prone to superstition—blocks his path. Yet he returns to Rudravanam only to find the villagers already under possession, ready to perform the rite. The trail eventually points toward Harishchandra Prasad, but the truth lands squarely on Nandini: she is Chalapathy’s daughter, whose identity was hidden by Harishchandra Prasad to shield the family. Confronting Nandini, Surya discovers that she and her brother Bhairava have been seeking revenge for the wrongful accusation of black magic against Chalapathy.

Nandini explains that Chalapathy was an Atharvana Veda practitioner who sought to cure his paralysed wife, but the village misread his methods. Nandini refuses to stop the ritual, yet Surya, bound by a talisman that prevents her from harming him, realizes that she may be forced to die to end the curse. With great reluctance, Surya stabs Nandini, ending the curse and saving the village.

After Nandini’s cremation, Surya urges the villagers to abandon superstition and repurpose Chalapathy’s house as a school, a concrete step toward healing. As he holds the talisman, his eyes flash with a supernatural light, a haunting hint that the story may continue in a future chapter. Along the way, the journey also touches the orphanage’s history and its founders, including Meka Sivaramakrishna as the orphanage’s founder, and the caretaker Rajsekhar Aningi who tended to the children, underscoring how past choices ripple into the town’s present.