Drishyam 1

Georgekutty's daughter, Anju, is blackmailed by Varun, son of Inspector General Geetha Prabhakar, using a hidden-camera video. During a nighttime confrontation at their home, Anju accidentally kills Varun while defending herself.

When Georgekutty returns home and learns of the accident, he decides to shield his family. He buries Varun's body deep underneath the foundation of a local police station that is actively under construction.

To present a flawless visual illusion, he takes his family on a trip to a religious gathering on the 2nd and 3rd of October. He collects movie tickets, restaurant bills, and bus receipts of those exact dates.

By repeatedly drilling his family on the timeline, the family survives brutal police interrogations. When a corrupt cop reveals the suspected burial spot outside their property. When they dig it up, they discover the carcass of a calf planted by Georgekutty.

With no physical evidence or corpse, the investigation collapses at the end of part 1. The IG resigns, and Georgekutty successfully walks free, leaving the truth buried right under the noses of the police.

Drishyam 2

Taking place six to seven years later, Georgekutty is now a more successful theatre owner. However, his family remains severely traumatised by the past, and Anju is now suffering from fear-induced epilepsy.

The police secretly reopen the case with a strategy. They plant an undercover married couple as friendly neighbours next door to eavesdrop on the family's private conversations.

A wandering criminal witness tells the police that he saw Georgekutty carrying a shovel at the unfinished police station on the night of the murder. Based on his testimony, the authorities dig up the police station floor and successfully retrieve a human skeleton.

Knowing that the body could eventually be uncovered someday, Georgekutty spends years befriending a local morgue guard. When the police excavate the skeleton, Georgekutty uses his connection to switch Varun's real bones with those of another dead individual of a similar age.

Meanwhile, Georgekutty had written a crime-thriller script detailing this exact murder, which was published as a novel under a screenwriter's name. In court, his defence argues that the police are framing him by copying the plot of a popular fictional book.

The forensic DNA test proves that the skeleton is not Varun's. Due to contaminated evidence, the case is permanently shut. Georgekutty later cremates Varun's actual remains and anonymously sends the ashes back to the grieving parents for final closure.