General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Sultan of Delhi

Sultan of Delhi is a 2023 Indian Hindi-language period crime drama streaming series created and directed by Milan Luthria, with Suparn S Varma as co-director and co-writer, released on Disney+ Hotstar on 13 October 2023. Adapted from Arnab Ray's 2016 book Sultan of Delhi: Ascension, it follows Arjun Bhatia, a survivor of the 1947 Partition who rises through Delhi's underworld in the 1960s.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Premiere	13 October 2023, Disney+ Hotstar; all nine episodes released together¹
Format	Hindi-language action crime drama, 9 episodes of about 36 minutes each; status ended³
Source	Adaptation of Arnab Ray's 2016 book Sultan of Delhi: Ascension²
Creators	Created and directed by Milan Luthria; co-directed and co-written by Suparn S Varma; produced by Namit Sharma for Reliance Entertainment⁴^•⁵
Lead cast	Tahir Raj Bhasin (Arjun Bhatia), Anjum Sharma (Bangali), Vinay Pathak (Jagan Seth), Nishant Dahiya (Rajendra Pratap Singh), Anupriya Goenka (Shankari Devi), Mouni Roy (Nayantara)⁶
Reception	IMDb 5.4/10 from about 6,500 users; Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 40% from 5 reviews⁷^•⁸
Awards	4 wins and 7 nominations, including IWM Digital Awards for Anupriya Goenka and cinematographer Vishnu Rao⁹

Spoilers

Premise and setting

The series opens at the 1947 Partition, when the young Arjun Bhatia and his father flee their home in the newly formed Pakistan for India after the rest of the family is killed in the riots.¹⁰ The main story then settles in the Delhi of the 1960s, where Arjun works as a mechanic and later as a driver for Jagan Seth, a powerful figure in illegal arms and other trades, and forms a close friendship with Nilendu, known as Bangali.¹¹

Arjun's rise brings him into conflict with Rajendra Pratap Singh, called RP, the privileged son of Delhi's top power broker, while Shankari Devi, a shrewd manipulator, schemes for power and pushes RP into a political battle against Jagan that escalates into a turf war.¹¹ A romantic thread with Sanjana, a woman from a higher social class, runs through the plot, and later episodes move to Bombay and Calcutta before a final confrontation between Arjun and Bangali in the ninth episode, "Till Death Do Us Part".¹²

Cast and characters

Tahir Raj Bhasin plays Arjun Bhatia, the Partition survivor who rises to power in Delhi's underworld. Anjum Sharma plays his loyal friend Bangali, a role the actor said went viral on social media after release.¹⁸^•¹⁹ Vinay Pathak plays the gun-runner Jagan Seth, Nishant Dahiya plays the antagonist Rajendra Pratap Singh, and Anupriya Goenka plays Shankari Devi.⁶ Mouni Roy plays Nayantara, a cabaret dancer at a Calcutta nightclub, and Mehreen Pirzada and Harleen Sethi play Sanjana and Preeti, Arjun's love interests.⁴^•¹⁸

Production

Sultan of Delhi marked Milan Luthria's debut as a director on a streaming series. Luthria had previously directed Once Upon A Time in Mumbai (2010) and The Dirty Picture (2011), and reviewers noted that the show carried the machismo, period styling and dialogue-heavy style of those films.¹³^•¹⁴ Suparn S Varma said in an interview that he was asked to write the screenplay about four and a half years before release, that the writing process took about two and a half years, and that the team first wrote the story moving between past and present before deciding to keep it in the past; he joined Luthria as co-director two days into directing.¹⁵

The series was produced by Namit Sharma under Reliance Entertainment, with music by Anu Malik, Amaal Mallik, and Siddharth-Sangeet Haldipur and cinematography by Vishnu Rao.⁵^•¹⁶ The trailer was released on 22 September 2023.¹⁷

Reception

Critical response was divided. Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV gave 1.5 stars out of 5, calling the show "all show and no substance" and criticizing its handling of the period, though he noted that Tahir Raj Bhasin and Vinay Pathak held their own.⁴ The Hindustan Times review called it a loud, formulaic gangster drama filled with outlandish clichés.² Manik Sharma, writing for Moneycontrol, found it "wholesomely unremarkable", arguing that Delhi is fought over on screen without ever being fully realized as a place.²⁰

More positive reviews came from Archika Khurana of The Times of India, who gave 3.5 out of 5 and praised the layered pacing and the performances of Bhasin, Sharma, Pathak, and Goenka, and from Bollywood Hungama, which gave 2.5 stars and credited the performances, period setting, and dramatic moments while faulting the script.¹⁸^•¹⁴ On aggregate measures, the first season scored 40% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer from 5 reviews and 5.4 out of 10 on IMDb from about 6,500 user ratings.⁸^•⁷

Awards

IMDb lists 4 wins and 7 nominations for the series. At the IWM Digital Awards 2024, Anupriya Goenka won Most Popular Negative Character in a Web Series and Vishnu Rao won Best Cinematography in a Web Series; Tahir Raj Bhasin won Breakthrough OTT Performance of the Year at the Lions Gold Awards 2023, and the series received nominations at the Indian Telly Streaming Awards and the Star Eminence Awards.⁹

Availability

The series streams in India on JioHotstar and VI movies and tv, and is available on Hulu in the United States; it is not available for streaming in the US through Indian platforms.⁶^•⁸

References

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