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A family under suspicion in Varanasi

Mulk is a 2018 Indian Hindi-language legal drama written, produced and directed by Anubhav Sinha. Set around a Muslim family, it stars Rishi Kapoor as Advocate Murad Ali Mohammed and Taapsee Pannu as Advocate Aarti Malhotra Mohammed, Murad’s daughter-in-law. Rajat Kapoor, Manoj Pahwa, Prateik Babbar, Ashutosh Rana, Neena Gupta, Prachee Shah Pandya and Indraneil Sengupta are among the supporting cast.

Murad, a lawyer, lives with his close-knit family in a densely populated, diverse part of Varanasi. His routine includes Namaz at a nearby mosque and tea with a Hindu neighbour who owns a stall. At home are Murad’s wife Tabassum, played by Neena Gupta; his brother Bilal, who owns a mobile-phone shop; Bilal’s wife Chhoti-Tabassum; their son Shahid; and their daughter Aayat. Murad’s son Aftab lives abroad with Aarti, who is estranged from the family.

The story begins on Murad’s 65th birthday, when Aarti visits. Family, neighbours and friends gather for the evening. In parallel, Shahid becomes involved with a terrorist organisation and is assigned to carry out a bomb attack in Allahabad. The following morning, after the birthday celebration, he leaves and carries out the planned attack with two acquaintances, causing many casualties.

A neighbourhood turns against Murad

SSP Danish Javed investigates the attack, tracks down those involved and confronts Shahid. The police then arrive at Murad’s house, interrogate the family and search the premises for evidence. Bilal is taken into custody. Aarti becomes his defence lawyer, while Danish questions Bilal for more than 17 hours without obtaining useful information.

The family’s standing in the neighbourhood collapses within hours. People Murad has known for decades regard him as a terrorist. After a hearing, Judge Harish Madhok refuses Bilal bail and orders seven days of police custody. Murad refuses to accept Shahid’s body after the postmortem and condemns his nephew’s actions, but hostility around the house escalates. Stones are thrown inside, and “Go back to Pakistan” is written on the boundary wall.

Murad also rejects efforts by extremist Muslims to describe Shahid’s death as a sacrifice in the name of Jihad and to call for an uprising against Hindu-dominant society. The family instead relies on legal procedure to clear its name. When court proceedings begin, public prosecutor Santosh Anand argues that Shahid’s actions were part of a wider pattern and alleges that every member of Murad’s family knew about and participated in terrorist activity.

The case moves into court

Santosh presents Shahid’s laptop, said to contain bomb-making procedures; a transmitter installed at Murad’s home; CCTV footage showing Bilal giving a lift to Mehfooz Alam; and evidence concerning SIM cards sold without valid documents. He asks the court to treat Murad as a person of interest and remove him as Bilal’s defence lawyer. The court agrees, forcing Murad to step down and leaving Aarti to take over the defence.

As the case turns against him, Bilal suffers a massive heart attack while being taken to hospital and dies. Aarti argues that there is no concrete evidence linking any family member other than Shahid to terrorism. She maintains that Shahid alone used the laptop, had installed the transmitter on the pretext of improving the cable television signal, and had access to SIM cards through his father’s shop. She also contends that public assumptions can brand Muslims as terrorists because of a beard or Islamic practice.

The film was developed after Sinha read a newspaper report and discussed an initial idea with friends. He wrote 13 or 14 drafts before narrating the story to people in the film industry, including director Shoojit Sircar. The actors had three months to prepare. Retired High Court Judge Nadeem Siddiqi from Lucknow advised Taapsee Pannu and Ashutosh Rana on courtroom scenes, while a Muslim scholar from Malihabad supervised Rishi Kapoor’s religious rituals. Principal photography began in Lucknow in October 2017, continued for 27 days, included two days in Varanasi, and finished on 9 November 2017.

Film details from the Wikipedia article “Mulk (film)”. Text adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0.