Year: 1991
Runtime: 127 mins
Language: Hindi
Director: Mahesh Bhatt
A taxi driver haunted by a tragic past gets a chance at redemption after he meets a woman forced into prostitution. Determined to free her, he battles the wrathful brothel madam, risking his own safety and confronting violent retaliation as he strives to break her captivity.
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Read the complete plot breakdown of Sadak (1991), including all key story events, major twists, and the ending explained in detail. Discover what really happened—and what it all means.
Maharani, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, a transgender brothel owner, runs a grim sex-trafficking operation in Bombay, maintaining power through fear and a tight network of loyal enforcers. She employs several women, among them Pooja Pooja Bhatt and Chanda Neelima Azim, turning vulnerability into profit and brimming the brothel with secrets that no one is meant to reveal. The world behind her doors is cold, calculating, and fiercely controlled, a place where escape feels almost impossible and every night brings a new demand.
Ravi Kishore Verma Sanjay Dutt, a weary taxi driver, carries a heavy memory that gnaws at him: the death of his sister Roopa Soni Razdan after she was coerced into prostitution following a doomed elopement. The trauma haunts his sleep with insomnia and sudden eruptions of violence, painting his life with a stain of vengeance he can barely name. Fate nudges him toward Pooja when he sees her briefly before she’s swept into Maharani’s grip, and this encounter rekindles a stubborn thread of pity—and something close to care—that refuses to vanish.
Ravi’s circle includes Gotya Deepak Tijori, a loyal friend whose own feelings for Chanda complicate the fragile balance around Maharani’s operation. When Ravi meets Pooja again as she tries to escape the brothel, he steps in with a plan: he uses his hard-saved money—thirty thousand rupees pulled together from Salim Bhai’s safe—to buy one night with Pooja, presenting himself as a customer who won’t walk away. The night unfolds with a mix of tenderness and danger as they roam the streets of Bombay, sharing a rare moment of intimacy and Ravi’s vow that he will keep returning for her, night after night, even as the risk of discovery grows.
Maharani’s suspicions flare when Ravi returns a second time, and she chides him for acting as though he’s madly in love or willing to bend her rules for a single woman. She reminds him that, after three decades in this line of work, she can read a man’s intentions better than anyone—and that if Pooja slips away in the morning, he clearly did not sleep with her. Still, Ravi’s persistence tests the limits of her control, and she agrees—only under the grim condition that he confront Pooja under her watchful eye and that the act happen while she is watching. The moment spirals into chaos as Ravi stabs Maharani to force an escape, pulling Pooja away from the clutches of the place with Gotya and Chanda following in the wake of a daring, violent uproar.
The quartet—Ravi, Pooja, Gotya, and Chanda—flee to a distant locale, where Gotya and Chanda exchange vows in a temple, blessed by the couple’s shared hope and Ravi’s tacit blessing. Their escape signals a fragile dawn; they return with Salim Bhai, seeking safety and a semblance of normal life, even as Maharani’s henchmen tighten their grip and search for them with ruthless determination. Salim Bhai presses Ravi to seek police protection, and Ravi, feeling the weight of his sister’s fate and Pooja’s, decides to involve Inspector Irani Pankaj Dheer, a police officer he glimpsed in a newspaper article, hoping for a shield against the looming threat.
What begins as a fragile alliance becomes a night of grafted fear and sudden violence. In a planned confrontation, Maharani and her henchmen lie in wait in a parking lot where the foursome is supposed to meet Irani for protection. The ambush erupts as Gotya and Chanda are shot, and Ravi, driven by a mix of fury and desperation, escapes with Pooja in Irani’s police jeep. The betrayal cuts deep, and Ravi warns Irani that the debt on his head will be paid in full.
Pooja is captured again, and Ravi, battered but unbroken, finds renewed strength to reclaim what’s his. In a climactic turn, he confronts the system that failed his sister and the woman he loves, killing Inspector Irani and setting Maharani’s brothel alight. The brutal blaze wipes away Maharani’s grip on the city’s darkest corner, and Ravi rescues Pooja from the wreckage of her world. Yet the victory is costly: Ravi is jailed for taking the law into his own hands, a modern vigilante facing the consequences of a society that refuses to protect the vulnerable. When he is released, the bond between Pooja and Ravi endures, unbroken by the fire and the flames, a quiet testament to resilience and the longing for a safer future.
In the end, the story circles back to a hard-won reunion: Pooja and Ravi come together again, their relationship tempered by tragedy, courage, and the hard-won belief that love can persist even after a city’s darkest nights. The layers of sorrow, loyalty, and defiance weave a tale that lingers in the memory, turning a harrowing Bombay landscape into a canvas where a man fights not just for justice, but for the chance to heal and to belong.
Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 15:00
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