The Dhurandhar main cast plays the characters that seem inspired by some of the biggest personas in the recent history of India and Pakistan.(Image Source: X.com/@AdityaDharFilms)
Dhurandhar is scheduled for release on December 5, 2025, and will be a 2025 Hindi-language spy action thriller. Though the movie, written and directed by Aditya Dhar, will have a fictional plot, it includes certain real-life geopolitical conflicts, secret RAW operations, and persons involved in the Lyari Operation in Karachi, Pakistan.
The main cast plays the characters that seem inspired by some of the biggest personas in the recent history of India and Pakistan.
Major Iqbal is the chilling antagonist of the film; his immediate brutality is established in the very torture sequence that introduces him in the trailer.
The character, played by Arjun Rampal, is inspired by notorious Pakistani militant Ilyas Kashmiri, who was once termed the "new Osama bin Laden," an extremely feared terrorist whose brazen tactics were unequivocally linked to major terror organizations such as Al-Qaeda and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
He was accused of being involved in several terror incidents in India, including the dreaded 2008 Mumbai attacks. It was 2011 when Kashmiri was reportedly killed in a U.S. drone strike.
Akshaye Khanna portrays Rehman Dakait, a character with the suavity of a shrewd politician and the ruthlessness of a gangster who boasts of killing "like a butcher." His fictional character is based on Sardar Abdul Rehman Baloch, also known as Rehman Dakait, one of Karachi's most feared underworld men.
Rehman Dakait transitioned from underworld activities to forming the People's Aman Committee. He was killed by police in a highly controversial encounter in 2009, allegedly because of political enmity.
He brings his signature intensity to the screen as SP Chaudhary Aslam, a fearless Pakistani police officer. The character is loosely based on encounter specialist Chaudhry Aslam Khan, who led the Karachi police's anti-gang operations and frequently targeted individuals like the real Rehman Dakait. Persistent in his pursuits, Khan survived several assassination attempts until his death in a 2014 bomb blast claimed by the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.
Chief of IB R. Madhavan plays Ajay Sanyal, an extremely experienced intelligence officer working for India's R&AW. By the looks he sports balding head, spectacles, and a serious demeanor and from the character's intense monologue on counter-terrorism, there is no denying that Sanyal is reportedly inspired by Ajit Doval, India's current National Security Advisor.
Doval himself has quite the real-life history of counter-insurgency, the 1999 IC-814 hijacking, the 2016 surgical strikes, and the 2019 Balakot airstrike, resonating with the high-stakes doctrine Sanyal preaches in the film.
Ranveer Singh leads the film as the central undercover agent. While the character's name is not shown in the trailer, his appearance and his operations inside Pakistan suggest that the main character has been inspired by a decorated Indian Army officer, Major Mohit Sharma (Ashok Chakra awardee).
Major Sharma is one of those highly decorated Army officers who infiltrated Hizbul Mujahideen with the alias of Iftikhar Bhat. He attained martyrdom in a counter-insurgency operation in Kupwara, Jammu and Kashmir, after killing the terrorists.
However, amid speculation and concerns within the family that resulted in intervention by the Delhi High Court, director Aditya Dhar made the clarification public on X: "Our film Dhurandhar is not based on the life of braveheart Major Mohit Sharma AC(P) SM. This is an official clarification." Earlier this month, the High Court asked the filmmakers and the CBFC to consult the family and experts in the Armed Forces before clearing the film.
Sara Arjun gets into a very different and significant phase of her career with Dhurandhar as she makes a bold move into mainstream cinema opposite Ranveer Singh.
Her casting in this high-stakes action thriller signals both her artistic maturity and a leap toward major commercial visibility.
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