Blackmail

Spoiler alert! Please do not read the following plot summary if you have not seen the film.Dev (Irrfan) is a toilet paper salesman who prefers to work till late hours in the office. Part of his daily ritual is to send his wife Reena (Kirti Kulhari) a text everyday before leaving work. When he reaches home, he has a habit of looking at his wife, through a crack in the kitchen wall. It is through this crack that he usually sees his wife sleeping in the kitchen. One day, his office friend Anand (Pradyuman Singh) gives him an idea to change his mundane life and add a bit of romance to his relationship. Anand tells Dev to go home early one day to surprise his wife. He even suggests Dev take flowers to make his wife feel romantic. Reluctantly, Dev agrees to the idea and goes home early from work, without sending his wife a message. After much effort, he manages to procure a bunch of roses for his wife. When he reaches home, he decides to first check on his wife through the crack in the kitchen wall. To his dismay, Dev sees that his wife Reena is sleeping with another man. During their sexual encounter, the man jokes that Reena’s husband will one day catch them red-handed. Dev, almost instantaneously has the urge to do something rash. He imagines he’ll barge into the bedroom and kill the man. He snaps out of his dream and wonders what to do. Again, he imagines he’ll barge into the bedroom and this time kill his wife. But he comes back to his senses and does absolutely nothing. He quietly steps out of the house and goes back to his car, parked below the building. He sits there pondering and waiting.

A while later, the man emerges from the building and hastily heads towards his car. Dev decides to follow the man. He drives around and eventually the man reaches a posh bungalow. Dev parks outside and then goes to the bungalow security guard to find out about the man who is having an affair with his wife. Dev bribes the security guy who tells him that the man’s name is Ranjit (Arunoday Singh) and that he’s married to Dolly (Divya Dutta) who is the daughter of the local politician Verma. Realising that Ranjit is married into a wealthy family and seeing that he drives around in a luxury sedan, Dev decides to blackmail him. He buys a new phone and sim card and sends an anonymous message to Ranjit asking for 1 lakh rupees as blackmail money, threatening to tell Reena’s husband about their affair. A startled Ranjit tells Reena about it who also panics. They decide to pay up but they realise they don’t have money. Ranjit decides to borrow the money from his wealthy wife.

Ranjit goes to his wife Dolly (Divya Dutta) and begs and pleads for the money. He tells her that he’s taking a loan to start a new business so he can stop being a slacker. Dolly insults him but she also humours him. She tries to be flirtatious and Ranjit reluctantly plays along. Dolly’s father, the politician Verma is of the opinion that Ranjit is a no-good cheat and loser and he’s against the idea of lending him money. Dolly though, does lend Ranjit the money. Ranjit deposits the money as instructed by Dev over sms.

Dev and Anand head over to a bar and over a few drinks, Dev reveals his plans of blackmailing his wife’s lover to Anand. Later, Dev sends Ranjit another message for more money. When Ranjit goes back to his wife and father-in-law for more money, his father-in-law instead warns him off and threatens him to return the 1 lakh he borrowed before in a few days. A desperate Ranjit asks Reena to give him money from her savings. She only has 30000 so she decides to ask Dev for the rest of the money. She makes the excuse of having her ailing father treated and borrows 90000 from Dev. Ranjit again pays 1 lakh to Dev and gives the rest of the cash to his father-in-law as an installment promising he’ll return the rest soon enough.

Meanwhile, Anand takes one of his office colleagues Prabha (Anuja Sathe) out on a date. After getting drunk, Anand accidentally shares Dev’s plans with Prabha, who in turn starts blackmailing Dev, threatening to expose his plan to his wife if he doesn’t pay. Dev reluctantly pays Prabha off. Dev then demands more money from Ranjit, who has nothing more to spare. In desperation, Ranjit sends Reena an anonymous email, blackmailing her to give money or else he’ll expose her affair. Reena borrows more money from Dev, under the excuse of her ailing father to give Ranjit money, who in turn pays Dev back. At the same time, Prabha starts demanding more money.

Dev’s, Anand’s and Prabha’s boss, DK (Omi Vaidya) meanwhile hatches a plan to have their local area’s water supply cut off so people start buying his toilet paper rolls. DK is also frustrated by the fact that someone from the office keeps stealing his wife’s photo from a frame in the office. Dev is shown to steal his bosses wife’s photos as well as other colleagues’ wife’s photos and uses them to jerk off in the office, when no one is around.

Dev has to tend to his boss’ demands, while dealing with several blackmails and money demands. Frustrated, Dev decides to confront Prabha at her place. He goes to her house and refuses to comply with her demands. In their altercation, Prabha accidentally has an entire shelf fall on her and she dies. Just as Dev is about to escape, Prabha’s parents arrive on the scene and Dev covers his face with a lingerie shop paper bag and runs away. He narrowly escapes the chasing mob.

Next day, the police ends up at Dev’s office investigating Prabha’s murder. A rattled Anand figures out that Dev has killed Prabha because of the blackmails. When he threatens to tell the police of Dev’s plans, Dev convinces him that he’ll pay Anand a large sum to keep his mouth shut. Instead, Dev plants the same lingerie shop bag that he used to escape in Anand’s car and the police arrest him for Prabha’s murder. On the other hand, Ranjit hires a private detective named Chawla to figure out his blackmailer’s details using the phone number. A few days later, Chawla figures out Dev is blackmailer. Instead of telling Ranjit the truth, Chawla starts blackmailing Dev, threatening to reveal his plans to all. Ranjit buys a gun from Chawla to intimidate his blackmailer once he finds out his details.

Meanwhile, Dolly follows Ranjit to a shady theatre where she see him cheating on her with Dev’s wife Reena. In the following altercation between Ranjit and Dolly at their house, Dolly stabs Ranjit in his bum while Ranjit accidentally ends up killing Dolly with the gun he bought. Scared, he hides Dolly’s body in the fridge and decides to blackmail Reena for more money. In turn, Reena asks Dev for more money who gets frustrated and confronts her mother and father. When Reena’s parents reveal that they don’t need any money for medical treatments, Dev gets a whiff of Reena’s plan. He figures out that Ranjit is blackmailing Reena for money and then he uses the money Dev gives Reena to pay him. Dev strikes a deal with the detective Chawla. Chawla informs Ranjit about his blackmailer and an angry Ranjit heads to Anand’s home and kills him off. When Ranjit comes back home, Dolly’s father catches him red handed, having discovered Dolly’s dead body in the fridge. Reena figures out that Ranjit has been cheating and blackmailing her so she gives up on him. She decides to turn a good wife and wait for Dev at home. Meanwhile, Dev’s boss DK’s plans are foiled as people buy bottled water instead of toilet paper when the water cuts come into effect. It’s shown that Dev has masterminded the water move too. Dev, deletes his wife’s contact from his mobile and leaves her hanging back home.