Tracing Pakistan’s Untried Operatives — And the Real Men Who Still Walk Free
“Perpetrators untried, justice unanswered — the silence speaks louder than evidence.”
Indian cinema has long revisited national tragedies, memorialising loss and sacrifice. But most films stop at the explosion, the crisis, the heroic last stand. They seldom touch the darker truth that lingers long after—the truth of men who planned terror and still live untouched. Dhurandhar breaks that pattern. It steps past familiar depictions of carnage to expose the unfinished chapters that India has been forced to live with: masterminds untried, handlers unpunished, justice indefinitely postponed.
This is the film’s unsettling power. It asserts that justice is not just a courtroom outcome but a national expectation—and when that expectation is denied, a country develops its own ways of questioning the silence. By recreating the architecture of past attacks, Dhurandhar forces us to confront a more urgent question: How long can a nation wait before an unanswered crime demands its reckoning?
Shifting Focus: From the Attack to the Machinery Behind It
Indian films have immortalised Parliament, IC-814, Kargil, Pathankot, and Pulwama. But few have probed what followed—the stalled dossiers, the diplomatic hedging, the chilling fact that the architects of these attacks never saw the inside of a courtroom.
Dhurandhar shifts the gaze. Instead of replaying one tragedy, it dissects the ecosystem that enables terror: handlers who train, ideologues who radicalise, technicians who enable, strategists who direct—all sheltered behind borders that grant impunity.
The Karachi underground, the compartmentalised cells, the intelligence choreography may be fictionalised, but they echo patterns well documented in dossiers, intercepts, and international security reports. The film’s message is clear: our problem is not that we don’t know the truth; it is that the truth has never been acted upon.
26/11: The Visible Horror and the Invisible Machine
Every terror attack has two worlds: the visible one we watch in news loops—and the hidden one that created it.
For 26/11, this hidden chain was precise:
- Lashkar camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir
- Trainers like Abu Qahafa and Abu Hamza
- Technical handlers like Zarar Shah
- Strategists like Sajid Mir and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi
- And the ideological canopy of Hafiz Saeed
All operated under one assumption: state protection. They were not rogue. They were assets.
Kasab was tried and executed—the only completed judicial process. His nine comrades died in combat. Beyond them, every key planner remains alive, sheltered and unconvicted:
- Hafiz Saeed: sanctioned abroad, protected at home
- Lakhvi: in and out of custody like a revolving door
- Sajid Mir: “dead,” “alive,” “arrested”—depending on the political weather
- Zarar Shah: vanished into bureaucratic fog
- Facilitators like Mazhar Iqbal and Muzzammil Bhat: names without trials
This is not a failure of evidence. It is a failure of political will.
The Headley Paradox
Across the Atlantic, another form of protection prevails. David Headley, the reconnaissance man for 26/11, sits in an American prison, insulated from extradition and shrouded in controlled secrecy. Officially, it is for his safety. Unofficially, it raises questions about intelligence bargains that superseded India’s demand for transparency.
His punishment is real; the truth he holds is not.
The Psychic Cost of Unfinished Justice
When justice stalls, memory becomes heavier. Dhurandhar captures this emotional residue. The real men who died that night were pawns; the real men who planned it roam freely. Intelligence agencies map networks and gather proof, only to watch geopolitics shield the guilty. Families carry grief. Survivors carry scars. And the nation carries the weight of a story without closure.
This is the true cost of unfinished justice: a wound that keeps reopening with every passing year.
Is Retribution Inevitable?
No nation tolerates unresolved threats forever. India’s strategic posture has already evolved:
- a doctrine of pre-emptive defence
- willingness to cross borders
- deeper intelligence networks
- and a more assertive geopolitical stance
Balakot signalled the shift. Future responses may be quieter, more precise, more technologically driven. The real question is no longer if but when the accumulated silence will demand its counter-narrative.
Cinema as Testimony
When courts stall, films speak. Dhurandhar is not history, yet it is emotionally truer than any official report. It honours covert operatives, underscores policy complexities, and confronts the silent injustice of fugitives who live protected lives.
Cinema cannot convict. But it prevents the world from forgetting—and forgetting is the shortest path to impunity.
The Story That Hasn’t Ended
Justice is the restoration of moral order. For 26/11, that order shattered twice—once in Mumbai, and again in the years that followed through denial, delay and diplomatic evasion.
One conviction cannot close a crime of this magnitude. The masterminds still walk free. Their freedom is a statement—one that shapes India’s strategic resolve and collective memory.
Dhurandhar ends on screen. The real story does not. It hangs suspended, waiting for the chapter the world has not yet allowed India to write.
Until justice speaks, the silence must.
