Critics don’t easily label a film about a real-life incident as 'honest'. The Bollywood film about Ujjwal Nikam, the prosecutor in the 26/11 case against Ajmal Kasab, has won rave reviews.

Avinash Arun's ‘Prahaar: The Untold Story of Ujjwal Nikam’ is called a rare honest contemporary film on the sensitive narrative of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Critics applaud filmmakers for not succumbing to propaganda.

Director Avinash Arun has made a mark as someone true to his tradecraft.

The trailer release of ‘Prahaar: The Untold Story of Ujjwal Nikam,’ was launched by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

The film brings out the multi-faceted character of India's most famous public prosecutor, Ujjwal Nikam. But the film is also the story of a lone Pakistani terrorist, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, who was caught alive, prosecuted as per the legal norms and procedures, and sentenced to death on November 21, 2012.

Critics also praise producer Dinesh Vijan's vision to avoid the propaganda trap. Except for one scene, one doesn’t see in the film that Islam is conflated with terrorism. A standout scene is one in which, during a heated argument in courtroom proceedings, Nikam calls Kasab's lawyer Abbas Kazmi (played by Sikandar Kher) a 'terrorist lawyer' instead of 'terrorist's lawyer'. Ujjwal Nikam would often do this during heated arguments to ruffle the defence lawyer's composure. The film begins with a court scene where Nikam -- played brilliantly and effortlessly by the talented Rajkummar Rao -- expresses his dissatisfaction at not having brought the masterminds behind the 12th March 1993 bomb blasts to justice: Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon and Pakistan's ISI. This happens even as the court announces punishments for the foot soldiers who carried out the attacks in Mumbai on the ground. 

The film sequence then jumps to 26th November 2008, the day when 10 Pakistani terrorists landed in Mumbai and killed 189 people across iconic landmarks in the heart of Mumbai.

The film is not about the terrorist Ajmal Kasab. It is about Ujjwal Nikam – the person, his tactics as a prosecutor during the trial to expose Kasab's lies, Pakistan's role in sponsoring terrorism, the role played by the Lashkar-e-Taiba in training the 10 terrorists, how Nikam sacrificed the comforts of family life, and his misunderstandings with his son (played by actor Ritvik Sahore!).

The film does justice as an untold story of Ujjwal Nikam. Nikam is an upright, righteous, no-nonsense public prosecutor who will go to any extent to deliver justice to the perpetrators of terror.