Mashaal

Mashaal is a 1984 Bollywood action film. Produced and directed by Yash Chopra, it starred Dilip Kumar, Waheeda Rehman, Anil Kapoor and Rati Agnihotri. The role played by Anil Kapoor was first offered to Amitabh Bachchan and then to Kamal Haasan, but after they declined the offer, the role went to Anil Kapoor. Vinod Kumar (Dilip Kumar) plays a respected, law-abiding citizen who turns to crime for exacting revenge. The movie was based on the well-known Marathi play Ashroonchi Zhali Phule written by famous Marathi writer Vasant Kanetkar. The movie was remade in Malayalam as Ithile Iniyum Varu with Mamooty playing the lead role. Plot Vinod Kumar (Dilip Kumar) is an upright and honest man, who runs a newspaper named "Mashaal". Vinod exposes the ills in the society with help of his newspaper. Vinod's wife, Sudha (Waheeda Rehman), sees a vagabond named Raja (Anil Kapoor) and tries to instill some values and culture in him. Vinod is sceptical about this, but accepts when Raja tells them of his tragic childhood and comes to regard Sudha as a maternal figure. Finally, Vinod decides to help Raja by sending him to Bangalore to complete his education and become a journalist. During frequent meetings with Vinod and Sudha, Raja befriends Geeta (Rati Agnihotri), an aspiring journalist and an assistant in Vinod's paper, and they fall in love. During his investigations, Vinod finds that S.K. Vardhan (Amrish Puri), a wealthy and respected man in the society, is behind many malpractices. Vinod starts exposing S.K's illicit business of drug-trafficking and selling hooch. Initially, S.K. tries to buy Vinod's silence by bribing him, but when Vinod decides to stand up to S.K., the latter inflicts misery on Vinod by having him thrown out of his rented house via the landlord. That very night, Vinod's newspaper office is burnt down by S.K.'s men. Helpless, and on the streets, tragedy strikes Vinod and Sudha further when Sudha, who is ailing, dies on the road, leaving Vinod distraught and heartbroken. A disillusioned Vinod realizes that S.K. will always trump him, since people also support him. Instead of trying to expose S.K., Vinod now decides to follow S.K's footsteps in order to destroy him. Vinod, in association with Kishorilal (Saeed Jaffrey), starts to produce illicit hooch and engages in other illegal businesses to earn money – the thing, Vinod retrospectively feels, he lacked, and the shortage of which led to the tragedies in his life. Soon, Vinod becomes rich.