Amita Malik, The Possessed and the Innocent, The Statesman, May 12, 1990:

"Nilita Vachani has not only a fascinating subject but also an outstanding cameraman and sound recordists. The film is edited very skilfully and produced and directed with instinctive sensitivity by Nilita Vachani…a most powerful film and I cannot wait to see it again..

The film takes a leisurely pace and the interviews with Shanta, her mother and the rest are detailed and evoke audibly sympathetic, if awed, reactions in the audience. The auditorium of the French Embassy was bursting at the seams, but everyone watched and listened in rapt silence.

Sorcery and the occult have always provided absorbing matter for films but there is no sensationalization in Ms. Vachani's film. She allows the camera, the sound and the dialogue full play and her direction and editing are as unobtrusive as possible. What is most interesting of all is how in this strange village where other possessed women also meet at the same temple and moan and thrash about on the ground, the passers-by take it in their stride and even the village dogs and children saunter by normally.

Shanta herself is a wonderful study in tradition combined with startling emancipation. Even while she pulls the veil over her face in her in-laws' home and talks in whispers to her husband, in the more liberal atmosphere of her parents' home, she comes out with the most courageous home truths about male chauvinism and in particular the callousness of her husband."

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