New Delhi: In Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar: The Revenge, the long-teased mystery of “Bade Sahab” finally gets an answer. The shadowy figure, spoken about in hushed tones in Dhurandhar (2025), is based on India’s most wanted fugitive and underworld don, Dawood Ibrahim.
Played by actor Danish Iqbal, Ibrahim is shown as an ageing, ailing man lying on a hospital bed, a far cry from the powerful don who once dominated Mumbai in the 1990s. Above his sick bed hangs a photograph from his heyday — the familiar image of the black-sunglass-clad gangster that has circulated widely for decades. The once-feared figure may be physically frail and practically immobile, but Dhar shows that his influence, especially over Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), remains as strong as ever.
In the movie, Ibrahim continues to pull the strings from the shadows and colludes with ISI to launch terror attacks in India. The Bombay 1993 blasts mastermind is shown to be living in Karachi’s upscale Clifton area in the film. He has three scenes in the film, one of which is a flashback from his younger days.
In the sequel, Major Iqbal (Arjun Rampal), an ISI agent, runs a counterfeit currency operation designed to destabilise India’s economy. In cahoots with Ibrahim, the operation plans to push thousands of crores of forged Indian rupee notes into circulation. The information is intercepted by Hamza (Ranveer Singh) and shared with Ajay Sanyal (R Madhavan), head of India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB). Sanyal then launches Operation Green Leaf, which uses demonetisation to foil Pakistan and Ibrahim’s plans.
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Dawood Ibrahim in popular culture
While India has insisted for more than a decade that Ibrahim is living in Karachi, Pakistan has always denied the claim. Dhar’s film, which draws inspiration from multiple real-life geopolitical events and conflicts between the two nations, including the 1999 IC-814 hijacking, the 2001 Indian Parliament attack, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks, portrays Ibrahim in accordance with India’s assertions about his Karachi residence.
Ibrahim has remained a popular figure in Indian pop culture, with Dhar’s film being the latest to portray him. Ram Gopal Varma’s Company (2002), Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday (2004) and Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2026 film, O’Romeo, have also shown Ibrahim in a variety of ways.
With Dhurandhar: The Revenge, Iqbal has entered the list of actors who have essayed the role of gangster, including Emraan Hashmi in Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai(2010), Rishi Kapoor in D-Day (2013), and Ajay Devgn in Company (2002).
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)