Khufiya is a mystery thriller film that is based on Amar Bhushan’s espionage novel Escape to Nowhere and follows the story of Krishna Mehra, an operative of the Indian spy agency known as R&AW, who is assigned to track down a mole who is selling defense secrets while grappling with her dual identity as a spy and a lover. This mole might be the reason her lover was killed. We take our time to explain the ending of the movie, which will contain spoilers.
The plot follows Krishna, who hires a woman named Heena while on her mission to take down Mirza, a Bangladeshi politician with close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI, whose rise to power is seen as a threat to India.
However, information about Heena’s mission is leaked by an insider, and she gets killed. During the investigation, it was thought that Ravi Mohan could be the mole, the man behind the leak. The team installed hidden cameras to catch him.
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While delving into Ravi and the CIA’s political motives, we learn that Krishna had fallen in love with Heena, and we watch her conflicts with this case deepen. With more twists and turns, everything draws to a serious, dramatic conclusion.
Even though the film has a long run-time, it does well in keeping its audience’s attention through its strong character and development. Where the story lacks, the cast makes up for it.
Khufiya Ending Explained
The film begins with a very memorable scene and sets the tone. The murder of Heena Rehman reveals there is a mole in R&AW and now the investigation into who, what and why begins.
Towards the end of the film, Ravi discovers a hidden camera at his home and escapes to the USA with his mother and Kunal, while Charu (his wife), who is against the betrayal of the country, is left behind injured.
Krishna then goes to the USA and once again starts tracking Ravi. This time, she joins forces with him to kill Mirza. She strikes a deal with Ravi that if he helps her assassinate Mirza, he will be set free and can return to India with his family.
How does Mirza die?
At an arranged dinner, Krishna plans to mix poison in lamb curry, to make the death look natural and not suspicious. Mirza senses something fishy is going on when no one will eat the curry, and he places a knife on Ravi’s mother’s throat, leading to mayhem in the house. Mirza slices her throat which makes Ravi smash Mirza’s head against the wall, leaving him injured, and Krishna comes up with the plan to let him bleed to death. They make his death look like an accident, and their secret remains safe.
We have one final shot of Ravi back in India, however, we do not know if he truly has his promised freedom.
The final scenes are of Krishna discussing her son and contemplating telling him the truth. She calls him on his birthday, and there is a sense of reconciliation — the film ends with Krishna getting the closure and it’s a comforting and oddly wholesome ending.
Is Khufiya based on a true story?
Khufiya is based on the novel Escape To Nowhere by Amar Bhushan, who is the former chief of counter espionage at India’s foreign intelligence agency, and for twenty-four years he worked in the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).
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Bhushan’s novel is meant to be fiction but is clearly based on some of the real-life cases he encountered while working at RAW due to the serious amount of detail in the novel.
His novel is inspired by a true event in which an R&AW agent was enticed by a CIA honey trap. The events unfolded in 2004 exactly as the timeline followed in Khufiya. An elaborate surveillance system set up by the counterintelligence team confirmed that the man in question was a CIA mole. Of course, we know that a lot will have been dramatized and characters changed, etc., but the story is pretty true to what happened in real life.
Why was Heena Rehman killed?
The film begins with the murder of Heena Rehman, also known by her coded name, Octopus, at a party organized by the Defense Minister of Bangladesh, Brigadier Mirza. The slight seductive banter is stopped when Mirza takes a phone call, revealing he knows what is in the glass and stabbing Octopus with a fork in the neck. Who is the mole in R&AW?
There are multiple doubts about agent Ravi Mohan in the film, and after bugging his office, we see him scanning sensitive documents, which is most likely connected to Heena’s death. At this moment we don’t know who he is sending it to. It is later revealed that Ravi Mohan is working for the CIA.
The CIA needed to win the trust of the ISI for a smooth transfer of Osama Bin Laden and thus warned Pakistani intelligence about the possible attack on Mirza. If R&AW murdered Mirza (as intended in the beginning), it would have destroyed ISI’s confidence in the CIA and the India-America nuclear deal would have suffered if action had been taken against the CIA. They then had to sacrifice Octopus to satisfy the goals of American intelligence.
What did you think of the ending of Khufiya? Comment below.
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