Mulk

Murad Ali Mohammed, a lawyer by profession lives amiably with his family in a densely-populated diverse locality of Varanasi. His close-knit family consists of his wife Tabassum, brother Bilaal who owns a mobile phone shop, brother's wife Chhoti-Tabassum, nephew Shahid and niece Aayat. Murad's son Aftab stays abroad with his wife Aarti, who's a lawyer and is a little estranged from the family. The story begins on the day of Murad's 65th birthday, when Aarti comes to visit them. The family enjoys a lovely night with the neighbors and friends. Another story is shown in parallel, where it is revealed that Shahid has joined hands with a terrorist organization headed by the wanted Mehfooz Alam who assigns Shahid with the task of a bomb blast. After the night of the anniversary celebrations, Shahid leaves early morning for Allahabad and executes the attack as planned with two other acquaintances. A lot of innocent people get killed and SSP Danish Javed is assigned with the task to investigate the crime. He tracks down everyone involved with the attack, corners Shahid and finally shoots him dead as he tries to escape instead of surrendering. Soon, police arrives at Murad's house and starts interrogating the family members. They turn the place upside down to gather evidence. Everyone whom Murad had known for decades starts looking at him as a terrorist. His life's reputation and goodwill gets shattered in a day. Bilaal is taken to court for hearing and the judge Harish Madhok denies his bail and grants police custody of him for 7 days for further interrogation. After postmortem, police brings Shahid's body to hand it over to Murad, but he refuses to accept. Despite him strongly condemning Shahid's act, situation worsens around Murad's neighborhood where the Hindus tag his entire family as terrorists trying to shame them in every possible way. Stones get pelted inside the house and "Go back to Pakistan" gets written on their boundary wall. Despite everything, the family maintains their compose and relies on legal procedures to get their names cleared. As the legal proceedings begin after 7 days, public prosecutor Santosh Anand tries to convince the court that this act of Shahid is not a standalone incident but an eye opener about how Muslims are breeders of terrorists. He requests the judge to consider Murad also as a person of interest in this case and remove him as Bilaal's defense lawyer. The court agrees, Murad has to step down and Aarti takes his place as the main lawyer for this case. With things turning against him at court, Bilaal, who is already tired, ashamed, confused, saddened, tortured and humiliated, suffers a massive heart attack and passes away on his way to the hospital. Bilaal had no idea who Mehfooz Alam was and so when he came to meet Shahid, he assumed him to be his friend and offered him a drop at the railway station since he was also heading in the same direction. Aarti also argues that it has become a mindset of people to consider all Muslims as terrorists and someone just by growing a beard or practicing Islam becomes a terrorist in public eye. Just because of this established taboo about Muslims, Murad and his family is going through this horrible trauma and humiliation which even claimed Bilaal's life. Public prosecutor Santosh Anand fails to produce any further evidence and the court concludes that all evidences against Murad and his family are circumstantial thereby dropping all charges against them. Judge Harish Madhok dismisses the case stating that the main problem is with people's mentality and everyone irrespective of their religion should fight against it to bring a change.