Indian movie Dhurandhar is not only ruling the box office but also dominating the online Twitter (X) space ever since its release on December 5.
Much has been written about the striking similarity of the movie’s storyline to real-life characters, for instance, Indian Intelligence Bureau (IB) Director Ajay Sanyal, played by R Madhavan and inspired by India’s current NSA Ajit Doval, or Karachi’s former underworld don Rehman Dakait, essayed by Akshay Khanna and inspired by Abdul Rehman Baloch.
However, there is much confusion about the real-life inspiration for the movie’s lead character, Hamza Ali Mazar, portrayed by Ranveer Singh.
An undercover Indian spy who infiltrates Karachi’s gang wars to play the long game and slowly climbs the ranks of the dreaded Lyari gang, Hamza’s character is apparently inspired by the “unknown gunmen” of Pakistan, who have repeatedly figured in police records, international media reports, and even diplomatic protests by Islamabad at least since the last five years.
In fact, the movie can be described as a tribute to these “unknown gunmen,” the nameless, faceless foot soldiers who remain a mystery despite so much reporting about them.
The ‘Unknown Gunmen’: The Making Of A Legend
Last year, British newspaper The Guardian published a sensational story that took the world, particularly South Asia, by storm.
The story, penned by Aakash Hassan (India), Shah Meer Baloch (Pakistan), and Hannah Ellis-Petersen (the Guardian’s South Asia correspondent), claimed that between 2020 and 2024, agents of the Indian foreign intelligence service (R&AW), with the active collaboration of the Indian government, organised the killings of up to 20 alleged Pakistan-based terrorists.
The authors claimed that their story was based on interviews with Indian and Pakistani intelligence officials. Of course, none of these intelligence sources were named in the story.
However, even before this story, there were murmurs that the agents of the Indian government were systematically assassinating India’s wanted criminals and terrorists in Pakistan.
Surprisingly, in every case, the modus operandi sounded spectacularly similar. Two “unknown” bike-borne gunmen opened fire, killing the alleged terrorist (wanted in India) and then disappeared into thin air, without leaving any trace.
These killings happened all over Pakistan, in Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, and Rawalpindi, among other cities.
These reports followed accusations by former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2023 that “agents of the Indian government” carried out the killing of a Canadian Sikh separatist leader, Hardeep Singh Nijjar.
“Canada is a country rooted in the rule of law, and the protection of our citizens is paramount. That is why, when our law enforcement and intelligence services began pursuing credible allegations that agents of the Government of India were directly involved in the killing of a Canadian citizen, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, on Canadian soil, we responded,” Trudeau said in Canadian Parliament.
Nijjar was brazenly shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C., on June 18, 2023.
Then, in November 2023, a US Justice Department indictment revealed that an Indian government official tried to mastermind the assassination of US citizen and Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun on US soil.
These accusations suggested a transnational spy network controlled by New Delhi that was actively involved in assassinating enemies of the Indian state.
Both cases are currently in court.
Pakistan has been suggesting for some time that India was involved in the extra-judicial killings of its citizens; however, when Canada and the US made similar allegations, Islamabad suddenly found a much more receptive international audience for its narrative.
The 2024 Guardian article alleged India’s direct involvement in nearly 20 killings in Pakistan between 2020 and 2024. Incidentally, the Guardian article also mentions the “unknown gunmen” for these killings.
“The fresh claims relate to almost 20 killings since 2020, carried out by unknown gunmen in Pakistan. While India has previously been unofficially linked to the deaths, this is the first time Indian intelligence personnel have discussed the alleged operations in Pakistan, and detailed documentation has been seen alleging RAW’s direct involvement in the assassinations.”
Notably, the article blamed Indian spy sleeper-cells based in the UAE for most of such clandestine operations in Pakistan.
However, according to the article, the “unknown gunmen” were most probably “local criminals, poor Pakistanis, or even Jihadists,” rather than Indian agents.
In other words, Indian agents had successfully infiltrated local criminal gangs operating in Pakistan to recruit low-level criminals for assassinating individuals wanted for terrorism charges in India.
“According to Pakistani investigators, these deaths were orchestrated by Indian intelligence sleeper-cells mostly operating out of the United Arab Emirates. The rise in killings in 2023 was credited to the increased activity of these cells, which are accused of paying millions of rupees to local criminals or poor Pakistanis to carry out the assassinations,” it said.
“Indian agents also allegedly recruited jihadists to carry out the shootings, making them believe they were killing ‘infidels’.”
It said that the 2019 Pulwama attack was the trigger that forced Indian spy agencies to change their tactics and start hitting the targets on foreign soil, before they get the opportunity to hit India.
“After Pulwama, the approach changed to target the elements outside the country before they are able to launch an attack or create any disturbance,” one Indian intelligence operative said. “We could not stop the attacks because ultimately their safe havens were in Pakistan, so we had to get to the source.”
Pakistani intelligence officials cited by the article claimed that apart from the UAE, Indian spy sleeper cells were active in Nepal, the Maldives, and Mauritius.
Indian involvement was blamed in the killings of Zahid Akhund, who was involved in the hijacking of the Air India flight in 1999, Shahid Latif, the commander of Jaish-e-Mohammed and one of the masterminds of the Pahthankot terror attack (2016), Bashir Ahmad Peer, commander of the terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen, Paramjit Singh Panjwar, the long-standing chief of the proscribed Khalistan Commando Force (KCF), and Saleem Rehmani, who was on India’s most-wanted list.
Notably, these killings of India’s most wanted criminals in Pakistan by “unknown gunmen” have continued unabated even after the April 2024 article brought worldwide focus on these killings.
For instance, in May 2025, unknown gunmen assassinated Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist Razaullah Nizamani Khalid in Sindh. The Lashkar operative was involved in the Indian Institute of Science attack of 2005 in Bengaluru and the terror strike at a CRPF camp at Rampur in 2001.
Earlier, in February 2025, Maulana Kashif Ali, the head of the Pakistan Markazi Muslim League (PMML), the political front of the terror organisation Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), was shot dead in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. Ali, who was also the brother-in-law of globally designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed, was a crucial figure in legitimising and advancing Lashkar-e-Taiba’s insidious political ambitions through the PMML.
According to another report, between 2020 and 2025, as many as 32 terrorists wanted in India have been eliminated on foreign soil, most of them in Pakistan.
Reports also claimed that Indian intelligence officials used social media to infiltrate networks of the Islamic State and the Taliban in Pakistan, to recruit youngsters for carrying out hit jobs. The recruits were convinced that they were conducting a “holy war” through these killings.
India has denied these accusations and reports.
However, in April 2024, India’s defense minister Rajnath Singh subtly warned that India’s enemies will be pursued on foreign soil as well, hinting that New Delhi might be involved in such killings.
“If any terrorist from a neighbouring country tries to disturb India or carry out terrorist activities here, he will be given a fitting reply. If he escapes to Pakistan, we will go to Pakistan and kill him there,” Singh said in an interview with an Indian news channel.
Also, it must be noted that gang wars have been a reality of Pakistan for a long time, and hundreds of criminals have been killed in these gang wars, not just the criminals wanted in India.
For instance, some estimates suggest that over 3,500 people were killed in the gang wars of Lyari (Karachi) between 2000 and 2010.
In the lack of any credible evidence, these are just accusations and theories, and it is difficult to conclude who is responsible for these killings.
Dhurandhar builds on these prevailing theories, though no one can be sure how much of it is fact and how much is fiction.
However, as a popular saying goes, there is no smoke without fire. There could still be some substance to the “unknown gunmen” theory of Indian intelligence agents working in the shadows to infiltrate Pakistan’s underworld and use their long-running inter-gang rivalries to their own advantage.
- Sumit Ahlawat has over a decade of experience in news media. He has worked with Press Trust of India, Times Now, Zee News, Economic Times, and Microsoft News. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Media and Modern History from the University of Sheffield, UK.
- VIEWS PERSONAL OF THE AUTHOR.
- He can be reached at ahlawat.sumit85 (at) gmail.com
