Kabir

The film centers on the tense pursuit of Yasin Bhatkal, the co-founder of the Indian Mujahideen, by the National Investigation Agency near the Indo-Nepal border, a backdrop that threads its way through a deadly sequence of events. The narrative opens with a string of bomb blasts in Mumbai, casting a shadow over the city and setting a grave, urgent rhythm for what follows.

A burkha-clad woman named Yasmin Khatun, Rukmini Maitra, in her early twenties, hails a taxi from Zaveri Bazaar with a clear destination in mind: VT station. The afternoon feels perilously uncertain as ambulances and police vehicles swarm the roads, and the taxi driver—short on explanations—refuses to proceed down a certain path. After a pause filled with unease, a car pulls over and offers Yasmin a ride. The man inside introduces himself as Abir Chatterjee, and the two head toward VT station, their conversation skirting the edges of danger.

Inside the Duronto Express waiting area, Kabir, Dev, begins to show a different, unsettling warmth toward Yasmin. He flirts, shares food, and then presses for information about her life. The mood shifts when he unveils a live video of Yasmin’s father, who is hostaged, and a video of her cousin Ruksana. The threat is stark: he will kill them unless she reveals Imtiaz’s whereabouts. Yasmin’s attempts to reach friends falter under the pressure, and the stakes rise as she is pressed to disclose the location before the train reaches Howrah.

The following day, Kabir discloses a startling truth: he is a jihadi, and a majority of the passengers in their compartment are his aides. Yet his revelation also unsettles Yasmin, who is forced to weigh competing versions of the truth. A second story emerges in which it is the house owner who betrayed the terrorists; Imtiaz was killed by the police’s special task force, and Yasmin herself is cast as a jihadi. Kabir—who now adopts the alias Altar Kabir—struggles to accept her account, and their dynamic grows even tenser as her testimony contradicts his carefully controlled narrative.

In the midst of this, Yasmin works to pass information to Syed, the Indian Mujahideen’s third-in-command, using a distinctive code number to identify the jihadis. Parallel to her actions, a unit of Indian police officers begins to decode those codes, and they manage to trace Syed and arrest him. Kabir then reveals another layer of himself: a special task officer whose mission is to dismantle the Indian Mujahideen from within.

The film tracks Yasmin’s unsettling realization that arresting her may be futile, as the Indian police would be compelled to hand her over to the head gang in exchange for hostages. Kabir understands the implication of her claim and makes a brutal, climactic choice: he kills Yasmin and shoots his own hand, presenting the scene as if he killed her in self-defense while trying to protect himself.

Throughout, the tension is sustained by a careful balance of interrogation, betrayal, and shifting loyalties, with the looming specter of a well-organized terrorist network intersecting with local law enforcement. The narrative keeps its focus on the human cost of a high-stakes hunt, the fraught choices faced by those caught between duty and survival, and the morally gray terrain navigated by officers and militants alike.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 15:55