Sanjay Dutt as Chaudhry Aslam — ‘Dhurandhar’ trailer sparks massive uproar online

WEB DESK: The trailer of the Bollywood film “Dhurandhar”, scheduled for release in India on December 5, has immediately become a major topic of online discussion across the border.

The film — written, directed and produced by Aditya Dhar — had been generating buzz for months. Earlier poster releases further fuelled curiosity among fans about the story it would tell.

Many had assumed that, like Dhar’s earlier hit “Uri- The Surgical Strikes”, “Dhurandhar” would also be inspired by real events, blending action and espionage-thriller themes.

The cast of Dhurandhar includes Sanjay Dutt, Ranveer Singh, Arjun Rampal and Akshaye Khanna. The story revolves around a Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, Indian agents and several real-life figures tied to Karachi’s notorious Lyari gang war.

One of the featured characters is Chaudhry Aslam — the Sindh Police officer known as an “encounter specialist” — who was assassinated in a terrorist attack on January 9, 2014.

The trailer is trending on YouTube, though some users are criticising the violent scenes shown in it. The film, which seemingly depicts Pakistan and India’s intelligence operations inside each other’s territories, is being released at a time when tensions between the two countries have persisted since the May standoff.

Chaudhry Aslam, Rehman Dakait and Lyari: What does the trailer show?

Dhurandhar’s trailer — uploaded on YouTube on November 18 — has already been viewed over six million times.

“This was when Zia-ul-Haq said something that stayed in my mind: “Bleed India with a thousand cuts.”

This line opens the four-minute trailer, which centres around several Pakistan-linked characters.

Early in the trailer, an Indian agent — played by Ranveer Singh — references former military ruler Ziaul Haq.

The Indian agent reaches Karachi’s Lyari neighbourhood, where a character resembling the notorious gang leader Rehman Dakait appears.

A story set in Lyari is indeed incomplete without Chaudhry Aslam, so interest spikes when the trailer introduces the Karachi Police SP. In the film, Sanjay Dutt portrays Chaudhry Aslam.

Who was Chaudhry Aslam?

Chaudhry Aslam, famous for his operations against criminal groups in Karachi, had a career that was both controversial and polarising. Opinions about him from those who knew him — closely or from afar — have always been sharply divided.

According to former Lyari SP Fayyaz Khan, one of Aslam’s closest associates, he first joined the Sindh Reserve Police’s famed “Eagle Squad” as an Assistant Sub-Inspector (ASI), but soon became a part of Karachi’s regular police force.

Chaudhry Aslam rose to the rank of Superintendent of Police through both performance and connections. He gained significant recognition after being appointed head of the Lyari Task Force.

He played a crucial role in the 1992 and 1996 operations against criminal networks in Karachi. Multiple allegations of extrajudicial killings were levelled against him, but investigations later cleared him.

Lyari gangster Abdul Rehman Baloch, commonly known as Rehman Dakait — and seen as a founder of the Peoples Aman Committee — was also killed by Chaudhry Aslam on August 9, 2009. The film also features the character of Rehman Dakait, played by Akshaye Khanna.

Aslam survived several assassination attempts throughout his career but was finally killed on January 9, 2014, in a bombing in Karachi along with his colleague Kamran and a security guard.

Reactions and criticism

While the trailer has boosted excitement among viewers, it has also triggered mixed reactions.

The violent scenes shown in the trailer have drawn criticism on X (formerly Twitter). Popular Indian YouTuber Dhruv Rathee wrote: “Aditya Dhar has taken Bollywood’s decline to a new low.”

He compared the violence shown in the trailer to “watching ISIS-style beheadings being presented as entertainment,” calling it extreme, brutal and psychologically harmful for young audiences.

Rathee added: “They are deliberately polluting young minds, desensitising them to violence and glorifying unimaginable brutality.”

He also questioned whether the censor board had even reviewed the trailer, given its usual objections to kissing scenes.

Another user wrote: “India is so influenced by Pakistan that it has now made a plot based on Karachi’s gang war.”

He added that the connections attempted in the film “don’t even connect.”

Pakistani policy expert Ali K Chishti wrote on X: “Indians are now making films on Rehman Dakait and Chaudhry Aslam. Why wouldn’t they? When we don’t tell our own stories, others steal them, rewrite them and sell them back to us. Our heroes, martyrs and wars belong to us — it’s time we create our own narrative before Bollywood does.”