'D.I. Ray' Recap: Episode 1

D.I. Ray airs Sundays at 9:00 pm and is available to stream. Recap the following episode.
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Rachita Ray constantly suffers small indignities as a South Asian woman in England. A man assumes she works at a store where she’s shopping; she is asked about her “heritage;” her accent is commented upon even though she has a British accent from Leicester; a desk clerk gives her the ID of another South Asian woman. But it’s not just non-South Asians who embarrass her: she only speaks English and so can’t chat in Punjabi, and she displays cultural ignorance about Hindu holidays and customs.

So Detective Inspector Ray is not all that surprised when she realizes that she won a promotion to Homicide because the police are investigating a “culturally specific homicide” involving South Asians and want a South Asian to lead the case—there have been recent “incidents” that have not endeared the police to that community.

Ray does deserve the promotion, however, after a heroic event. She was off-duty when a car sped through barricades and nearly hit her. The driver—apparently in the middle of a psychotic episode—jumped out and fled, brandishing a knife and stabbing a uniformed police officer who tried to stop him. Ray followed and called in backup, then talked the man down as armed police response teams arrived. The knife wielder was arrested without harming anyone else.

Such courage won Ray a commendation. At the ceremony, she met the superintendent, who moved her to Homicide—she’s exactly what they need right now, he tells her.

That’s because a Muslim man named Imran Aziz has been found stabbed to death in his car. His girlfriend Anjuli Kapoor is Hindu, and her brothers Kabir and Navin run a luxury car company. Aziz had set up his own car company, and his sister told police that the Kapoors hated him because of the rivalry and because he was Muslim. There are even threatening texts and calls from the Kapoor brothers to Aziz. His murder is being investigated as an honor killing. D.I. Ray provides the police cover in terms of cultural sensitivity.

But she is skeptical of the honor killing narrative. Nevertheless, her boss pressures her to arrest the Kapoor brothers. She thus reluctantly stands by as an aggressive armed team barges into the Kapoor household and manhandles the Kapoor brothers. Navin calls her a “coconut,” a demeaning insult implying that she is more white than South Asian.

More evidence piles up against the Kapoors. A machete is found in their office. They claim to have been at a gas station at the time of Aziz’s killing, but CCTV footage fails to corroborate the alibi. Navin answers “no comment” to every question the police ask him.

Since Ray only speaks English, PS Tony Khatri is assigned to the case to provide translations. He sits in on Ray’s interview with Anjuli’s parents, who are upset by the raid on their house. They don’t have information, and leave the police station to stay with Anjuli’s aunt for a few days.

Ray wants to find and speak to Anjuli, who was doing henna for a wedding at the time of Aziz’s death. But her family claims to not know where she is, and she is ignoring any contact from the police. Ray leaves her a voicemail personally.

That night, Ray is followed home and hears a knock on her door as soon as she gets inside. No one is there, but a package has been left for her. It’s a burner phone that might have been Aziz’s—it has a trace of his fingerprint. Ray suspects Anjuli left it for her. An ID of Anjuli’s car near Ray’s house that night seems to confirm her suspicion.

Ray and Khatri visit the beauty school where Anjuli trained and meet a worker there who was once Anjuli’s friend but turned on her after Anjuli started dating Aziz, who was the worker’s boyfriend first. The worker also believes that the Kapoor brothers are behind Aziz’s death; she knows of another person who tried to set up a rival car business and then saw it burned down, she assumes by the Kapoors.

Ray is facing more and more pressure from above to charge the Kapoor brothers with murder, but she still isn’t convinced. Khatri asks her if she’s being blinded by her own agenda, to not force South Asian people into stereotypes.

Ray certainly doesn’t want to be a stereotypical passive wife. When her secret boyfriend, DCI Martyn Hunter, proposes to her, she doesn’t say yes but does allow him to put the ring on her, even though she’s never even met his parents. (He already proposed once before, although he was drunk and didn’t have a ring.) When she arrives at the office early the next morning, she takes it off before going inside.

A report is waiting for her: the machete found in the Kapoors’ office was not used to kill Aziz. She also looks back at CCTV footage from the gas station where the Kapoors claim to have been during the murder and realizes that the camera’s clock is off by an hour. The Kapoors were there, just as they said. They are released from custody.

Even though Ray has been proven right in her skepticism, her boss tells her to provide constant updates since she resisted orders to charge the Kapoors. And her boss assigns Khatri to the case full time.

Khatri thus joins Ray again when she visits Anjuli’s mother, who is unhappily staying at her sister-in-law’s home along with her husband and newly released sons. Ray tells her that she thinks Anjuli is in danger, and that she just wants to get in touch with her and make sure she is safe.

Anjuli calls Ray that night. She tells Ray that she needs to unlock the burner phone she left for her to learn more about Aziz’s death, something that the police’s tech department is working on. Anjuli wants to meet, but warns Ray not to bring any backup. Ray calls Khatri and tells him to bring a team but stay out of sight.

But Ray goes to speak to Anjuli before the team arrives, fearing that Anjuli will flee. Anjuli is afraid for her life. She says that Aziz’s father left the car business in debt, and so Aziz had to accept an offer from some unsavory people to save the business—Anjuli won’t say who.  They started using his business for their own work—which explains the odd payments to Aziz's company in the past few months. Aziz told the debt holders he wanted them to stop, and they threatened his mother, his sister, and Anjuli.

Ray’s phone rings, and Anjuli starts to panic. She runs away. As Ray starts to follow, she is hit in the head and knocked out.