General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

School of Lies

School of Lies (स्कूल ऑफ लाइज) is a 2023 Hindi-language drama thriller streaming series in which a 12-year-old boy goes missing from an elite private boarding school, setting off an investigation that exposes abuse, secrecy and complicity among the school's students, staff, and parents. It was produced by BBC Studios India for Disney+ Hotstar, where all eight episodes began streaming on 2 June 2023.¹

Key fact	Detail
Format	Hindi-language scripted drama thriller; 8 episodes of about 36 minutes, one season, status ended²
Premiere	2 June 2023, all episodes released on Disney+ Hotstar (now JioHotstar)¹^•³
Setting	The fictional hill town of Dalton Town and the private boarding school RISE¹
Creators	Avinash Arun (also director and cinematographer) and Ishani Banerjee¹^•³
Lead cast	Nimrat Kaur as counselor Nandita Mehra; Aamir Bashir as housemaster Samuel Mahinder Singh⁴
Audience rating	5.9/10 on IMDb (about 1,200 votes); certified UA16+ in India⁴
Awards	1 win and 11 nominations, including a 2024 Times of India Film Awards OTT Edition win for Aryan Singh Ahlawat⁵

Spoilers

Premise and setting

The series opens with the disappearance of Shakti Salgaonkar (Vir Pachisia), a 12-year-old student at RISE, a prestigious boarding school surrounded by hills in the fictional Dalton Town. As the search proceeds, every account of the boy and his last whereabouts differs, and attention falls on the adults around him: housemaster Sam (Aamir Bashir), who has more on his mind than a boy missing on his watch; guidance counselor Nandita Mehra (Nimrat Kaur), brought in to question students without frightening them; Shakti's mother Trisha (Geetika Vidya Ohlyan); and senior students Vikram Singh (Varin Roopani) and Tapan "TK" Kaushal (Aryan Singh Ahlawat), who know more than they admit.⁶^•⁷

Director Avinash Arun described the story as one "that we all have read in the news at least once in our lives," about students facing bullying and other problems at school, and said the series was inspired by real events he had heard of.¹ Reviewers identified the show's subject as a boarding school culture of abuse and complicity in which boys stay silent out of a code of loyalty, and its themes as child abuse, trauma, parenting, neglect, and guilt.⁸^•⁹

Production

Creation and writing. Avinash Arun, a cinematographer on films including Masaan and the director of the National Award-winning Marathi film Killa (2014) and the web series Paatal Lok, co-created the series with writer Ishani Banerjee, known for Aligarh and Human. The screenplay was written by Banerjee with Nishant Agarwala and Shoaib Nazeer, and Arun also served as cinematographer.¹⁰^•³^•⁹ The music was composed by Gaurav Chatterji and Ashish Zachariah, and the producer credited is Deepali Handa.³

Banerjee said the idea grew out of the pandemic period, when Arun sent her articles about boarding school stories, and that the writers visited boarding schools in North and South India while building the show's world. Because the setting is an elite boarding school, the team made a conscious choice to keep much of the dialogue in English, judging that a fully Hindi version made the world look unreal.⁹

Cast. Nimrat Kaur leads as the school counselor Nandita Mehra, alongside Aamir Bashir, Varin Roopani, Divyansh Dwivedi, Aryan Singh Ahlawat, Hemant Kher, Parthiv Shetty, Adrija Sinha and Aalekh Kapoor; the wider cast includes Geetika Vidya Ohlyan, Nitin Goel, Sonali Kulkarni, and Jitendra Joshi.¹^•³ Kaur said the role gave her a new experience of working with children on set, and described the series as a story about "uncomfortable truths and inconvenient realities that we brush under the carpet."¹⁰

Reception

Indian critics responded positively to the craft and performances. The Indian Express called it an immersive, engaging series with characters who "feel real," singling out Aamir Bashir's housemaster as its most tragic figure, while noting that some side plots, including a child-trafficking thread, felt underdeveloped.⁶ NDTV gave it four stars and called it an "assiduously crafted" series.¹¹ A Scroll.in review found the series overloaded with characters and side plots but praised the lead performances, particularly Bashir, Kaur, Nitin Goel, Roopani and Ahlawat.¹² Audience scores were middling: 5.9 out of 10 on IMDb from about 1,200 votes.⁴

The series received one win and eleven nominations. At the 2024 Times of India Film Awards OTT Edition, Aryan Singh Ahlawat won Debut Actor/Actress of the Year in a Series, and Geetika Vidya Ohlyan was nominated for acting excellence in a supporting role. The 2023 Filmfare OTT Awards nominated the show for Best Series (Drama), Avinash Arun for Best Director, Aamir Bashir for Best Actor, Nimrat Kaur for Best Supporting Actress, and the screenplay by Ishani Banerjee and Nishant Agarwala for Best Original Screenplay.⁵

Availability

The series streams on JioHotstar, including free with ads, and on VI movies and tv.⁴ Besides the original Hindi, it is available dubbed in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, and Bengali.³ It carries a UA16+ certification in India, reflecting content that includes severe profanity and moderate violence, alcohol, and drug use.⁴^•¹³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026