- An advertising professional and a political heiress whose lives are upended by a viral social media rumour.
- During upcoming elections communal riots erupt between Hindu and Muslim where the government is forced to impose section 144.Vikram Singh who takes his rally from one of the riot's area is attacked by a mob where his henchmen Chandan kills one of the attackers.Nivi fiance of Vikram isn't happy with the kind of actions Vikram is taking and elopes from the house where she is chased by Vikram's goons.But gets rescued by a Rahab Ahmed whose approaching for the book launch of his wife and Nivi escapes in his car.After the incident Vikram's goon chase their car and want Rahab dead but Nivi promises to save him on the other hand Vikram orders corrupt cop Tomar to kill Chandan to save his political career but he mistakenly shoots another person.Also to save his political career Vikram spreads a rumor on social media about love jihad where a Muslim man has eloped with a Hindu girl.The video goes viral within no time creating tense situation in the city.While Nivi and Rahab are running allover to save their lives they land up with Chandan in a truck which is said to be smuggling beef and is the major cause of the communal riots.—alex.mjacko@gmail.com
- Rahab Ahmed (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) driving down a narrow highway road when a convoy of jeeps owned by a political party nearly pushes him off the road as they speed in the opposite direction. This convoy is led by a man named Chandan Singh (Sharib Hashmi), a local political henchman, who soon arrives at his party superior Vicky Singh's (Sumeet Vyas) rally. Vicky is an up-and-coming leader of the Rashtriya Vikas Dal, a powerful party in the desert state that is being shown.
Vicky's rally on this particular day is at a locality that is predominantly Muslim, but his words are positioned against these very people. The situation gets very tense soon when Vicky is pelted with a few stones, and he has to step down and take shelter inside his car. Chandan spots a helpless Muslim meat seller and enters his shop. Pulling down the shop's shutter in a show of political strength and influence, Chandan then beats the man to death.
As the entire rally and the subsequent violence are all recorded by media channels, clips of them are soon released all over the internet. To make matters worse for Vicky, a clip of him telling Chandan to retaliate right before the henchman goes and kills the meat seller goes viral. Although he has the support of his party superior, Gyaan Singh, there is immediate trouble in his personal life. Vicky's fiance, Nivedita (Bhumi Pednekar), or Nivi, is terribly upset by the violence and hatred that he and his party are part of. Nivi is also the daughter of Gyaan Singh, the woman decides to run away from home. Nivi would find help in Rahab Ahmed, who is driving towards the Nahargarh Fort to attend his wife's book launch.
Rahab Ahmed attends a talk conference on his way to Nahargarh. A veteran in the field of advertising and hailed as "the adman," Rahab used to live and work in the United States before returning to India. He claims to have stopped some men from racially heckling an Indian man and his grandson in the US. Rahab's method to do so was to immediately start recording the incident on his smartphone, which stopped the hecklers from disturbing the elderly man. He then believed that he could genuinely do better things in India than in the US or anywhere abroad, and for this reason, he returned to his homeland. However, much later, Rahab admits to Nivi that this was all a lie. Instead of taking any action against the racist hecklers, Rahab actually got off the bus and was left shaken and scared after the incident.
It was out of fear that Rahab had returned to India, where he possibly felt that he would not face any such ostracizing. However, an equally terrible hatred actually comes his way in India, too, because of his identity as a Muslim. Rahab does actually use the smartphone to save Nivi from Vicky's goons when he sees her for the first time.
Vicky Singh is mostly concerned with the state-level politics that he is involved in and dreams of reaching the very top of his regional political party. As a figure respectfully called Bana by his followers, Vicky's aim is clearly to reach the stature of Gyaan Singh, who is venerated as Hukum. The incidents that took place at the rally at the very beginning do create pressure on Vicky, for the police as well as his political superiors, who want his trusted henchman Chandan to be killed. Chandan trusts Vicky and tells him that he is hiding at Vicky's farmhouse. It is even more shameful that Nivi ran away from him. Vicky gets his men to track Nivi down as well but is unable to get hold of her as she escapes with the stranger, Rahab. While escaping Vicky's goons, Rahab crashes his car. Nivi convinces Rahab that he is now involved and if they are caught, Rahab would be killed. Nivi had written a letter to Gyaan blaming Vicky for her running away from the house. Vicky never reveals this letter to Gyaan as he is in the hospital getting surgery.
It is then that Gyaan Singh sends an IT expert to Vicky to ease his situation. Videos that had been shot during the altercation with Nivi and Rahab had been procured by the expert and his team, from which the license plate of Rahab's car could be seen. Identifying that the car belonged to a Muslim man, the man suggested that they term the incident a case of "love jihad." The IT expert and his team quickly edited the videos to present a narrative that the Hindu Nivi was escaping with the Muslim Rahab because of an extramarital affair, and the helpless Vicky could do nothing as he was overpowered. The narrative also presents Gyaan Singh as a helpless victim, for he had no idea what his daughter had been up to. As Vicky is desperate to track Nivi and, more importantly, to cleanse his image in public, he approves of this plan, and the rumor is spread all over social media.
Both Nivi and Rahab face troubles because of this false narrative. Rahab knows only Nivi can save him as she is Gyaan Singh's daughter. When the two take shelter on a university campus as riots rage throughout the city, a young student confronts them about their apparently unlawful love. Nivi tells the student about how one should not blindly believe everything on the internet. Nivi and Rahab escape when Vicky's men reach the university. They are recognized by Vicky's henchman on the highway, who fires a shot by mistake and hits Nivi. He runs away in fear. Nivi has to be taken to the hospital, but nobody helps Rahab. The video about the love jihad is watched by the people, and the hospital staff keep them locked inside until Vicky and his group arrive.
A corrupt police inspector named Sandeep Tomar (Sumit Kaul), has a direct relationship with the party officials, and he is quite close to Vicky Singh himself. Although Vicky does not want his henchman Chandan to be harmed, Gyaan Singh directly asks Tomar to get Chandan killed in order to maintain the party's public image. Along with this political pressure, Tomar is also instructed by the DGP to kill Chandan so that the state authorities' strict actions on law and order can be propagated. Finally, as Vicky also accepts this fate for his henchman, Tomar goes to the farmhouse where Chandan has been hiding but mistakenly kills a different man. Chandan realizes that someone is trying to get him killed and runs away.
The sister of this slain man reports the murder to the police, and Tomar tries to bury the matter through his subordinate, Riya Rathod (TJ Bhanu). Riya was having sexual relations with Tomar in exchange for her job at the police station. She was tracking Tomar's mobile and knew he was at Vicky's farmhouse. Tomar admits that he was trying to kill Chandan and wants Riya to help him. He asks Riya to kill the sister, so that the man's murder can be covered up.
After escaping from the farmhouse and then realizing that it is the police inspector Tomar who is trying to kill him, Chandan gets help from a Muslim truck driver who lets him hide inside his truck. In this desperate moment, the henchman truly does not mind taking help from a man of the minority community, against whom he is generally so hateful.
Chandan Singh had been on the run, and he had taken shelter inside a truck in order to travel to a different city. Vicky gets to know of this when he calls Chandan (after he realizes that Tomar killed the wrong man), along with the license number of the truck, and he once again seeks help from the IT expert. It is now Vicky himself who cooks up a false narrative about how the truck is smuggling beef inside its cargo and gets the expert to create a video about this and get it viral on the internet. With the majority of the population enraged by this rumor, hordes of young men get out on the roads, trying to find the truck and stop it.
Chandan escapes Tomar multiple times (Tomar intercepts the truck but Chandan convinces the driver to ram his way through). The Muslim driver is shot by Tomar and dies. Chandan takes over the truck. Tomar calls Riya to pursue Chanda. Chandan realizes now that his location has been compromised twice, and figures that Vicky is trying to get him killed. Chandan finally reaches the hospital where Nivi and Rahab are being held hostage. Nivi believes that Chandan is there to drive her to Vicky, instead Chandan tells Nivi that Vicky is trying to kill him and wants Nivi to save him. He agrees to drive them to Nahargarh Fort.
Rahab uses the smartphone once again when he tells Nivi to record a video about how she was being hunted and persecuted by her fiance and his party workers and put it up on social media. Chandan Singh claims that Vicky has every right to do anything to Nivi because she is going to be his wife soon, but any such action against her by anybody else is a major crime. Rahab is shocked to hear this, and Nivi remarks that this is exactly how the lives of women in a patriarchal society are. Vicky knows that Chandan rescued Nivi and driving them to Nahargarh in the truck. He orders the viral truck video to be taken down, but it is already viral. Vicky knows he has to save Nivi himself now as the mob will lynch her.
Chandan, Nivi, and Rahab reach the fort, but the lit-fest authorities refuse to let Rahab enter, stating that there was massive unrest in the state because of his actions. They, of course, refer to the fake video stating that Rahab was in a love jihad. Rahab calls his wife, who appeals to the authorities, but nobody is willing to help her or Rahab. Nobody has to courage to save a life. During this time, Vicky also arrives on the scene and has a confrontation with Chandan. Chandan keeps asking his boss why he wants him dead, and Vicky simply denies the charge, saying that Tomar was working on his own accord. Chandan's is easily convinced by Vicky's lies and chooses to stay faithful to his boss. Vicky orders Chandan to kill Rahab. Chandan proceeds to stab Rahab, gets into a fight with him, and is ultimately found and shot dead by Sandeep Tomar. Riya breaks up with Tomar and informs him that the sister is alive. If Tomar harasses Riya, she will produce the sister in front of the DGP.
On the other side, Vicky gets hold of the truck with Nivi inside and starts driving it away from the fort. But by this time, hordes of violent men, who were all searching for the truck, had found the vehicle and blocked the path. Realizing that they are here to act against the apparently interfaith couple, Nivi embraces Vicky and starts kissing him in full view of the men, and they angrily take Vicky to be the Muslim man running away with the Hindu woman. Vicky is engulfed by the same flame of hatred that he had earlier spread through the rumors, and he is lynched by the angry mob. The next morning, when the police arrive and open up the cargo haul of the truck, it is revealed that the vehicle was only transporting donkeys, and there were no cows or beef at all.
Although stabbed by Chandan, Rahab manages to survive the attack with wounds, when he climbs the walls of the fort and drops into the literary fest. He is treated at a hospital. Once fully recovered, Rahab returns home and decides not to shave his beard.
On the other hand, Nivi is seen to have become a politician one month later, following the death of her fiance, Vicky. She is now the leader of her father's party and is about to fight for a position in the upcoming elections. Despite having once hated the kind of politics practiced by her father and her fiance, Nivi joins the same profession, perhaps with the hope of bringing better justice to society. Nivi is also seen with Riya, and perhaps she has been promoted to some higher post in the police force.
A last scene alongside the end credits shows Rahab and his father seemingly returning to their home, but the building has recently been burned down, possibly by people who were still hateful against Rahab for the love-jihad rumor. But Rahab's father claims that the house needed to be razed down to be rebuilt someday, and Rahab also accepts fate and helps in clearing the rubble.
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