General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Drohkaal (द्रोह काल)

Drohkaal (द्रोह काल; also released as Droh Kaal, English title Times of Betrayal) is a 1994 Hindi action thriller directed and produced by Govind Nihalani that examines India's fight against terrorism through the psychological burden borne by honest police officers running a covert infiltration operation. It stars Om Puri as Deputy Commissioner of Police Abhay Singh and Naseeruddin Shah as DCP Abbas Lodhi, and it was simultaneously remade in Tamil and Telugu in 1995 as Kuruthipunal and Drohi.¹

Key fact	Detail
Director and producer	Govind Nihalani, who also wrote the story and script and shared cinematography credit¹
Runtime and language	162 minutes (2 h 42 m), Hindi, color²
Lead cast	Om Puri (Abhay Singh), Naseeruddin Shah (Abbas Lodhi), Mita Vashisht (Sumitra), Ashish Vidyarthi (Commander Bhadra), Amrish Puri (IGP Pathak)¹
Remakes	Tamil Kuruthipunal and Telugu Drohi, both 1995¹
Awards	National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor (Ashish Vidyarthi); Star Screen Award for Best Supporting Actress 1996 (Mita Vashisht); Best Director, Damascus International Film Festival 1995 (Nihalani)¹
Box office	Budget ₹6,500,000; total nett gross ₹8,875,000; listed as a flop; declared tax free in Maharashtra³
Audience rating	IMDb average 7.8/10 from about 526 votes⁴

Spoilers

Plot

The story follows two experienced anti-terrorism officers, Abhay Singh (Om Puri) and Abbas Lodhi (Naseeruddin Shah), who run a classified operation to dismantle a terrorist organization spreading fear across Indian cities. Two undercover officers, Shiv (Milind Gunaji) and Anand (Manoj Bajpayee), are infiltrated into the group under assumed identities. When Anand's cover is compromised, he sacrifices his life to protect the mission's secrecy, while Shiv gradually earns the full confidence of the organization's leader, Commander Bhadra (Ashish Vidyarthi).¹

Bhadra is eventually captured but refuses to divulge anything under interrogation. A series of terrorist attacks, the assassination of a government minister, and the suspicious deaths of key witnesses expose a network of sympathizers embedded within the state apparatus. In one account of the plot, Bhadra, working from informers inside the police, manipulates Abhay from prison, threatening his wife Sumitra (Mita Vashisht) and child; Abhay's superior, IGP Pathak (Amrish Puri), is revealed as an informer and commits suicide.² The Tuli Research Centre account instead frames Pathak's apparent suicide as evidence of how deep the infiltration into the government machinery runs.¹

The domestic thread centers on Sumitra. Surinder (Annu Kapoor), a militant who with his companion Mala (Joan David) keeps Abhay's family under surveillance, attempts to assault Lodhi's daughter; Sumitra intervenes and kills him in self-defense, protecting her family and restoring Abhay's resolve. Abhay then confronts Bhadra in a final struggle and kills him. To preserve the undercover operation, Abhay orders Shiv to shoot him so that Shiv's loyalty to the organization remains unquestioned; Abhay's self-sacrifice lets Shiv take over the organization and continue the covert mission from within it.¹

Cast and crew

The ensemble cast is led by Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah, with Mita Vashisht as Sumitra Singh, Ashish Vidyarthi as Commander Bhadra, and Amrish Puri as IGP Pathak. In supporting parts, Annu Kapoor plays Surinder, Zeenat is portrayed by Ila Arun, Milind Gunaji takes the role of Shiv, Anand is played by Manoj Bajpayee, Inspector Tiwari by Shrivallabh Vyas, Kishan by Vineet Kumar, Jaswanti by Kitu Gidwani, Mala by Joan David, Mangal Dev by Shiv Kumar Subramaniam, and Sadiya Siddiqui appears as Gulshan Lodhi.¹^•⁵

Nihalani wrote the story and script, with dialogue by Atul Tiwari and G.P. Deshpande and an associate script by Anjum Rajabali; Malay Ray shared cinematography, Vanraj Bhatia composed the music, Dilip Panda edited, and Nitin Chandrakant Desai was art director. The film was made under the Udbhav Productions banner and presented by Manmohan Shetty.¹ Moviebuff's trivia notes that Amitabh Bachchan was offered the film but turned it down.²

Release and box office

Release dates differ across databases: Moviebuff lists 1 January 1994 for a wide theatrical release in India,² BookMyShow, FMDb, and IMDb list 31 August 1994,⁶^•⁵ and Box Office India lists 5 May 1995 with a run of 35 screens.³ Box Office India records a budget of ₹65,00,000, a first week of ₹33,25,000, a total nett gross of ₹88,75,000, and about 786,000 footfalls, and classifies the film as a flop; it was declared tax free in Maharashtra on release.³ A retrospective review notes that the film went largely unnoticed in 1994, releasing alongside hardcore commercial actioners.⁷

Reception and legacy

Contemporary and later critics praised the film's realistic depiction of terrorism, institutional corruption, and the moral dilemmas facing law enforcement.¹ In a September 1994 review, Madhu Jain of India Today described the film as a "metaphysical thriller" set, in Nihalani's own words, in "Conradian territory", where the lines between good and evil blur; she noted that Nihalani deliberately leaves the setting unspecified, neither Punjab nor Kashmir, so it could be anywhere, and called Om Puri superb as the officer Abhay Singh.⁸ Reviewers have also read the film's portrayal of corruption less as temptation than as moral blackmail, and noted that Abhay's "honesty" expresses itself partly through custodial brutality.⁹^•¹⁰

Despite its poor commercial performance, the film has come to be regarded as one of the significant works of Indian political and realist cinema.¹ Its influence ran in an unusual direction for Hindi cinema: Kamal Haasan remade it in Tamil as the successful Kuruthipunal, a case of South Indian cinema remaking a Hindi film rather than the reverse.⁷ A study of Indian terrorism films places Drohkaal with Roja (1992) and Maachis (1996) among the early films depicting the older terrorism of kidnapping, hostages, and hijacking, before later films turned to mass-casualty plots.¹¹ On IMDb the film holds an average rating of 7.8/10.⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Indian films (individual works) › Hindi films of the 1990s › Action and thriller films › Released 1990 to 1995

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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