“Someday they’ll make movies about me,” SSP Chaudhary Aslam had once declared — and with Dhurandhar, that prediction has finally materialized. Sanjay Dutt steps into the shoes of Karachi’s most feared and flamboyant encounter specialist, a man whose life was as volatile, dramatic, and dangerous as the criminals he hunted.
The film introduces Aslam in full force: bullets ripping through the air, gangsters scrambling, and Dutt’s Aslam striding in to the pulsating beat of “Hawa Hawa,” unleashing sharp Hindi cuss words with effortless swagger. It’s a cinematic recreation of the charisma and brutality that turned Chaudhary Aslam into a legend — a man hailed in Lyari as “Robin Hood” and feared everywhere else.
Aslam was credited with eliminating several of Karachi’s most notorious gangsters. Even after surviving a Taliban assassination attempt in 2011, he refused to scale back his operations. In 2014, he was finally killed in an attack claimed by the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), at a time when he was serving as SSP of Karachi’s Anti-Terrorism Unit.
On another podcast, however, Noreen expressed pain over certain words used in the film — terms like “son of the devil” and “jinn” — which she felt were disrespectful to both her husband and his mother, whom she described as a simple, dignified woman.
Noreen also revealed that Aslam had admired Sanjay Dutt since the 1990s, after watching Khalnayak. Seeing Dutt take on the role of a battle-hardened Lyari police officer felt fitting: “Chaudhry liked Sanjay Dutt, and I am sure he will do justice to the role.”
Born Muhammad Aslam Khan in Mansehra in 1963, he joined the Sindh Police in the 1980s and quickly built a reputation for his uncompromising approach. His rise began at Karachi’s Gulbahar Police Station, where his aggressive policing style set him apart. Before long, he was leading operations at the very heart of Karachi’s violence, commanding the Lyari Task Force during the state’s war against the city’s most notorious gangs.
As a senior Karachi Police officer, Aslam led relentless operations against criminal syndicates, sectarian killers, and extremist networks. He carried out some of the city’s most dangerous raids while living under near-constant threat. According to his widow, he often told her, “My fate is sealed — God has already written my end,” a line that haunted her as she waited for the day his prediction might come true.
Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar arrives with a powerhouse ensemble — Sanjay Dutt, Arjun Rampal, and R. Madhavan — and strong word-of-mouth has already pushed the film beyond the ₹100-crore global mark in its opening weekend. The thriller expands far beyond Aslam’s storyline, kicking off with Ranveer Singh as Hamza, an undercover Indian spy infiltrating Rehman’s criminal empire while feeding intelligence back home. As Hamza moves deeper into the network, he inches closer to bringing down the kingpin at the centre of the storm.
