| Director | Anubhav Sinha, David Esposito |
|---|---|
| Genre | drama film |
| Country | India |
| Budget | ₹19 crore |
| Box office | ₹28.3 crore |
Mulk revolves around the struggles of a Muslim joint family from a town in India, who fight to reclaim their honor after a member of their family takes to terrorism.
Murad Ali Mohammed (Rishi Kapoor), a lawyer by profession, lives amiably with his family in a densely populated diverse locality of Varanasi. His daily routine includes Namaz at a nearby mosque followed by some chit-chat over a cup of tea from a tea stall managed and owned by one of his close Hindu neighbors. His close-knit family consists of his wife Tabassum (Neena Gupta), brother Bilaal (Manoj Pahwa) who owns a mobile phone shop, sister-in-law Chhoti-Tabassum (Prachee Shah Pandya), nephew Shahid (Prateik Babbar) and niece Aayat (Eshita Singh, credited as Vartika Singh). Murad's son Aftab (Indraneil Sengupta) lives abroad with his wife Aarti (Taapsee Pannu), who is also a lawyer and is estranged from the family.
The story begins on the day of Murad's 65th birthday, when Aarti comes to visit them. The family enjoys a lovely night with their neighbors and friends. Another story is shown in parallel, where it is revealed that Shahid has joined hands with a terrorist organization headed by the wanted Mehfooz Alam (Sumit Kaul), who assigns Shahid to carry out a bomb blast. After Murad's birthday celebrations, Shahid leaves early morning for Allahabad and executes the attack as planned with two other acquaintances, which causes a lot of casualties.
SSP Danish Javed (Rajat Kapoor) is assigned to investigate. He tracks down everyone involved with the attack, corners Shahid and finally shoots him dead as he tries to escape instead of surrendering. Soon, the police arrive at Murad's house and start interrogating the family members. They turn the place upside down to gather evidence. As the news spreads, people start to flock outside Murad's house. Bilaal is taken into custody for further interrogation. Aarti steps up his defense lawyer. Danish interrogates Bilaal for over 17 hours but gets no useful information.
Within a matter of hours, the situation around Murad's neighborhood changes drastically. Everyone whom Murad had known for decades starts looking at him as a terrorist, with his life's reputation and goodwill shattered in a day. Bilaal is taken to court for a hearing where Judge Harish Madhok (Kumud Mishra) denies his bail and grants police custody of him for 7 days for further interrogation. After postmortem, the police bring Shahid's body to Murad, which he refuses to accept. Despite him strongly condemning his nephew's atrocity, the situation worsens around Murad's neighborhood, with the people trying to shame them in every possible way. Stones get pelted inside the house and "Go back to Pakistan" is written on their boundary wall. On the other hand, some extremist Muslims try to convince Murad that Shahid has sacrificed his life in the name of Jihad and all the Muslims should rise up against the Hindu dominant society, but Murad strongly opposes this. Through everything, the family maintains their composure and relies on legal procedures to get their names cleared.
As the legal proceedings begin after 7 days, public prosecutor Santosh Anand (Ashutosh Rana) tries to convince the court that Shahid's act is not a standalone incident but an eye opener about how Muslims are breeders of terrorists. He argues that every single member of Murad's family was aware of and complicit in Shahid's activities, and his home was the den of terrorist operations. As evidence, he presents Shahid's laptop which contains detailed procedures of how to make bombs, a transmitter which was installed at Murad's home to communicate with the terrorists via private frequencies, and CCTV footage of Bilaal giving a lift to Mefooz Alam and selling SIM cards to terrorists without asking for any valid documents. He requests the judge to also consider Murad a person of interest in this case and remove him as Bilaal's defense lawyer. The court agrees and Murad is forced to step down, so Aarti takes his place.
With things turning against him at court, Bilaal, who is already tired, ashamed, confused, saddened, tortured and humiliated, suffers a massive heart attack and passes away en route to the hospital. With Murad's family having suffered another setback, everything comes down to Aarti to get her father-in-law and his family acquitted of all the charges against them.
Aarti justifies in court that there is no concrete evidence any of the family members aside from Shahid were involved with terrorism. Shahid was the only person in the household who knew how to use a laptop and the transmitter was installed by him under the excuse of boosting their cable TV signal. Since he had access to his father's mobile shop, Shahid took those SIM cards without any documents and used them to communicate with the terrorists. Bilaal had no idea who Mehfooz Alam was and so when he came to meet Shahid, Bilaal assumed him to be his son's friend and offered him a ride to the railway station since he was also heading in the same direction. Aarti also argues that it has become accepted for people to generalize all Muslims as terrorists, to the point someone just growing a beard or practicing Islam becomes a terrorist in the public eye. Due to this established taboo, Murad and his family are going through a horrible trauma and humiliation, which even claimed Bilaal's life.
Santosh fails to produce any further proof and the court concludes that all evidences against Murad and his family are circumstantial, thereby dropping all charges against them. Judge Madhok dismisses the case, stating that the main problem is with people's mentality and everyone irrespective of their religion should fight against it to bring a change.
The movie ends with the moral that we should change our way of thinking from "Us and Them" to "We".