New Delhi Times

1985 123’ col Hindi d/co-st Ramesh Sharma pc P.K. Communications co-st K. Bikram Singh co-st/sc Gulzar c Subrata Mitra m Louis Banks lp Shashi Kapoor, Sharmila Tagore, Om Puri, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, A.K. Hangal, Manohar Singh, M.K. Raina, Farrokh Mehta A political thriller examining the links between crime and politics in a north Indian state. The editor of the English-language New Delhi Times, Vikas Pande (Kapoor) has to confront the politician Ajay Singh (Puri) who is associated with a powerful lobby of illicit liquor manufacturers. The trail of murders, sequestrations in insane asylums, beatings and the instigation of communal riots by political henchmen eventually leads to the corrupt chief minister, D.N. Trivedi. Made in the style of Costa-Gavras’s films and of Pakula’s All the President’s Men (1976), the film is inspired by the case of the Indian Express whose editor Arun Shourie exposed the criminal links of Maharashtra’s chief minister, A.R. Antulay. The owner of the Indian Express, R.N. Goenka, is the figure evoked in the film by Vikas’s boss, the publisher Jagannath Poddar (M. Singh). The film faced official censorship when Doordarshan initially refused to broadcast it.

Film