General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Kathmandu Connection

Kathmandu Connection is an Indian Hindi-language crime drama web series created for the streaming platform SonyLIV, directed by Sachin Pathak and written by Siddharth Mishra. Its two seasons, released in April 2021 and December 2022, follow Delhi Police officer Samarth Kaushik, journalist Shivani Bhatnagar, and gangster Sunny Sharma through fictional cases tied to two real events: the 1993 Bombay bombings and the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Platform and format	SonyLIV original; 2 seasons, 12 episodes, average runtime 34 minutes, Hindi language, adult (A/UA) rating¹^•²
Release dates	Season 1 on 23 April 2021 (episodes dated 22 April on some listings); Season 2 on 22 December 2022³^•⁴^•⁵
Season 1 setting	1993, months after the Bombay blasts; a hotelier's kidnapping, a customs officer's murder, and a journalist's stalker all connect to a casino in Kathmandu²
Season 2 setting	The hijacking of Delhi-bound flight IC-814 and its holding in Kandahar, five years after the first season¹^•⁶
Principal cast	Amit Sial (Samarth Kaushik), Aksha Pardasany (Shivani Bhatnagar), Anshumaan Pushkar (Sunny Sharma), with Gopal Datt, Anurag Arora, Zakir Hussain, and Prashant Narayanan²
Key crew	Director Sachin Pathak; writer Siddharth Mishra; producer Ajay G Rai; production house Jar Pictures; music and background score by Sneha Khanwalkar⁶
Reception	IMDb rating of 5.9 from about 2,200 users; critics gave mixed reviews praising Amit Sial's performance²^•⁷

Spoilers

Season 1 (2021)

The first season begins in 1993, a few months after a series of blasts in Mumbai that had shaken the country. A parallel investigation is under way in Allahabad over the killing of a customs officer, and in Delhi a prominent hotelier is kidnapped while the television journalist Shivani Bhatnagar receives blank calls from a stalker. The cases share two common threads: the Bombay blasts and Kathmandu.²^•⁸

Under covert instructions from the CBI, DCP Samarth Kaushik, described by reviewers as a decorated but self-centered officer with a messy personal life, travels unofficially to Nepal to investigate a casino in Kathmandu run by Sunny Sharma, a gangster and terror suspect in the 1993 blasts who operates as the aide of the Dawood Ibrahim associate and politician Mirza Baig.⁹^•¹⁰ A further complication links the two men personally: both fall in love with Shivani, whom Sunny has harassed with calls and gifts since college.⁷

The season's six episodes are titled The Connection, The Big Game, Rise And Fall, Trump Card, Ace King Queen, and All In, with card-themed names matching the casino setting.⁴

Season 2 (2022)

Season 2, released in full on 22 December 2022, moves the story forward five years. Shivani Bhatnagar now works for a London-based media house as an investigative journalist and is assigned the hijacking of Delhi-bound Air India flight IC-814, which is held in Kandahar. While investigating she turns for help to Sunny Sharma, who is serving his sentence in Tihar Jail, while Samarth Kaushik has quit his job and retreated to the hills of Uttarakhand.¹^•⁵

The season's episodes are Saazish, Khatra, Dhamaka, Sauda, Dhokha, and Ran-neeti. Its plot threads include Shivani's discovery of secret documents linked to the hijack and a national security threat, her capture and torture by Ashraf Baig, Sunny's prison escape, and a peace summit involving the President of Pakistan in Delhi, with the trail again leading back to Kathmandu.⁵^•⁶

Production

Sachin Pathak directed both seasons; his other credits around this period include the web series Rangbaaz. Ajay G Rai produced the show through Jar Pictures, and the cinematographer was Arun Kumar Pandey.⁶^•¹¹ The series is loosely inspired by real events and is set in the early 1990s, with period detailing that includes the absence of cellphones and a synth-heavy background score by Sneha Khanwalkar.¹⁰

Reception

Critical response to the first season was mixed. The Indian Express found the show watchable but slow, noting that the introduction of the lead characters and their family life consumed three-and-a-half of the six episodes, and compared it unfavorably in pacing to series such as The Family Man and Special Ops, while crediting Amit Sial's grounded performance with anchoring the show.¹² Scroll called it a welcome variation on the cops-and-gangsters formula with solid performances from the principal cast, and Cinema Express gave it 3 out of 5, writing that Amit Sial anchors a shaky thriller and singling out the show's odd cultural references, including a music cassette from the 1983 film Hero.¹⁰^•⁷ On IMDb the series holds a rating of 5.9 from about 2,200 users.²

Availability

The series streams on SonyLIV, where it is presented in UHD with Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision audio and video options, and with audio tracks in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, and Marathi. It is also available on VI movies and tv, Airtel Xstream, and free with ads on SonyLIV.¹^•²^•¹³ A Bengali-dubbed version is also carried on SonyLIV.⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Indian and South Asian web series

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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