In a recent conversation on Hindustan Times show Point Blank, Executive Editor Shishir Gupta sat down with Senior anchor Ayesha Verma ‘Why’ to unveil a new terrorism thrillerstalwart‘The film centered on 26/11 has struck such a deep chord with Indian audiences – and how much of it is rooted in reality. What emerged was less of a film review and more of a rigorous tour through four decades of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, India’s political responses and the personalities driving New Delhi’s national security doctrine.
Why this movie ‘clicked’
Gupta’s starting point is clear: the film works because it reflects the anger of the majority of people who have lived through waves of terror again and again. He describes the film as a “cinematic interpretation” of real events over the past 25 years – facts woven with “a little bit of imagination” to create an entertaining narrative – but insists that the underlying events are real.
According to him, more than 2,000 to 3,000 innocent Indians have been killed in terrorist attacks in the hinterland alone during this period, with “thousands” more killed in Kashmir. He argues that the Hindu majority, “has been deeply affected by terrorism sponsored by Pakistan and its proxies within India” and that lived experience is what makes audiences naturally sympathetic to the director’s message. He says the film is not changing minds that much giving cinematic expression To a sentiment already widely prevalent.
From Afghanistan to Khalistan and Kashmir
To explain the portrayal of Pakistan’s ISI, underworld and politicians as the main villains in the film, Gupta goes back to 1979 and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He says, at that time, Pakistan – supported by the US and Britain – “played a double card”: using the jihadi infrastructure to promote anti-Soviet jihad as well as increase terrorism against India.
He sketches a continuum:
- First, Pakistan supported Khalistan Funded by terrorism, drug money and arms trafficking in the 1980s and early 1990s.
- Then, from 1989 onwards, Kashmir-centred insurgency, using local proxies, while Islamabad described Kashmir as Pakistan’s “jugular vein” – a characterization which Gupta calls “completely wrong”.
- After 9/11, there was a shift towards “domestic” and Islamic terrorist networks such as the Indian Mujahideen, again taking advantage of the underworld and creating cells in Uttar Pradesh, Mumbai, Karnataka and Kerala.
He underlined Western complicity, arguing that the radicalization pipeline – Wahhabi and Salafi ideology spread to fight the Soviet Union – was encouraged by the major powers and then “could not be controlled.”
26/11: Intelligence, failure and politics
The film focuses on the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, and Verma presses Gupta on whether the state “failed the country” – an issue that has been under public debate since 2008. Gupta’s answer is clear: the intelligence was there, and it was specific.
They say US agencies had informed India about the infiltration of Al-Husseini, a ship carrying Lashkar-e-Taiba commandos, around November 19-20 – about six days before the attacks. The alert, he says, was circulated by the director of the Intelligence Bureau to all enforcement agencies, including the Maharashtra Police.
What failed in his assessment was:
- The then leadership of Maharashtra Police did not act effectively on the warning.
- Operational surveillance – Coast Guard passengers from Daman tried and failed to identify the ship using “door mirrors”.
- A political establishment that had been “playing politics with terrorism” since 2004 focused more on vote-bank calculations than on stamping out the network.
For Gupta, 26/11 remains “a terrible event that happened to India” that the country “has never forgotten and will never forget,” and the film’s emotional power comes from reopening those wounds in a way that is consistent with what many Indians saw in that decade.
He also describes a “vicious circle” he believes Pakistan and its proxies exploited: radicalising, inciting riots and communal tension, increasing terrorism – all while creating fear within the minority community about the majority. According to him, this was “a vicious game” rooted in deep ideological hostility towards “Hindu India”.
Dawood Ibrahim, ISI and Karachi Project
One of the most talked about elements of the film is its main underworld villain Dawood Ibrahim, who is depicted as the master planner behind the attacks on India. Gupta emphasizes this creative choice: he says that David is central, but not omnipotent.
Based on his own reporting, he calls Dawood a “funder of Pakistani terrorism against India” who is indebted to Pakistan for sheltering him after the 1993 Bombay bombings, which killed more than 200 people. According to Gupta, Dawood’s main role is to arrange drug money for terrorist operations. He insists that the actual operational planning is done by the ISI and the Pakistan Army, with no meaningful separation from the political leadership. They say Dawood lives in Karachi, has a farmhouse near Pervez Musharraf outside Islamabad, and moves into ISI safe houses when pressure increases.
On the broader question of whether Pakistan has “succeeded” in terrorizing India, Gupta distinguishes between phases. He argues that in the first decade of this century, Islamabad’s “Karachi Project” – which used Indian Mujahideen cells to attack soft targets across the country between approximately 2004 and 2013 – resulted in huge losses, with at least a thousand civilian lives lost. But he believes the balance changed after that period.
Modi, surgical strike and troubled Pakistan
Gupta credits the Modi government for bringing dramatic changes in the security scenario. He says that by the time Narendra Modi took power, many internal modules had been destroyed, leaving Pakistan with fewer local assets and pushing it towards direct attacks like the attacks in Uri, Pulwama and the recent Pahalgam.
He lists Indian responses – from the Uri surgical strikes to the Balakot air strikes (dubbed “Operation Bandar/Barak”) and “Operation Sindoor” against terror camps – and makes a political claim: “Only the Narendra Modi-led government could have ordered the strikes on the Jaish-e-Mohammed camp and Lashkar-e-Taiba bases in Bahawalpur.” He compared it to inaction under the previous UPA government despite 166 deaths and national humiliation after 26/11.
Today, Gupta argues, Pakistan itself is “in very, very hot water.” He indicates:
- A Baloch insurgency and a Pashtun insurgency.
- Tensions with the Afghan Taliban, who do not recognize the Durand Line and have their own regional narratives.
- Separatist sentiment among the Baloch and Sindhi groups is demanding their own regions, leaving “ostentatious Punjabi Muslims” as the visible face of the state.
For him, the “real revenge” is still the potential abrogation of the Indus Water Treaty, allowing India to retain more of the river’s water for its own needs – he believes this would hit Pakistan “very hard” and reflects a hardline view in Delhi that “Pakistan will never change.”
Ajit Doval, Narendra Modi and India’s ‘Dhurandhar’
The film’s protagonist is based on National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, forcing Verma to ask whether he is really the “dhurandhar” – the mastermind – behind India’s anti-terrorism stance. Gupta, who has covered intelligence for decades, portrays Doval as a rare figure in many of India’s most significant security crises.
He said that Doval:
- When Masood Azhar and Omar Saeed Sheikh were caught, they were in Kashmir.
- Terrorist commander Ilyas Kashmiri, also known as “Peer Saheb”, who had fled from the Nizamuddin Railway Station following the hostage-taking incident of four foreign nationals in 1994, was dealt with.
- During Kandahar, Kargil, 9/11 and the December 13 Parliament attack, he gained a long, formative understanding of Pakistan’s ecosystem.
Gupta added three important details: unlike some predecessors, Doval is not a member of the BJP; After 26/11, the CIA contact in India reportedly met him at the Vivekananda International Foundation to warn that three Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives had been sent to eliminate him; And on January 1, 2016, Doval tried to get the Pathankot attack canceled by personally calling his Pakistani counterpart, Nasir Janjua – a request that was “never fulfilled.”
Yet when Verma returns to who the “real bigwig” is, Gupta is clear: in his view it is Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He argues that Modi has empowered the intelligence and enforcement agencies and created a team that can work on internal and external security. He highlights two key lieutenants: Home Minister Amit Shah, whom he credits with dismantling the Indian Mujahideen after the 2008 Ahmedabad blasts, and Doval, “who knows Pakistan like the back of his hand” and assures activists that if they act in the national interest, he will stand behind them.
It is this ecosystem – a dogged political will, an active security establishment, and a public that has lived through decades of trauma – that Shishir Gupta sees reflected, dramatically, on screen. He suggests that the film has become a phenomenon, not because it instills fear, but because it channels the memory that India has carried, often silently, for a quarter of a century.
