22-year-old Neerja Bhanot arrives late for a house party one evening. Her mother, Rama, expresses concern about Neerja's job as a flight attendant, suggesting that Neerja should return to her old modelling career. Neerja insists on keeping her job. She is driven to the airport by her friend Jaideep. During the flight, Neerja reflects on her brief, unhappy arranged marriage to Naresh, a professional in Doha, Qatar, who abused her over her small dowry and inability to perform household work. She eventually returned home for a modelling contract. Naresh sent her parents a letter complaining about the dowry and their daughter's lack of domestic skills, demanding that Neerja either bring back the money or not return it at all. Neerja left Naresh and landed a job with Pan Am Airways. As Neerja boards Pan Am 73, it is meanwhile revealed that the Abu Nidal organisation, a Libyan-sponsored Palestinian terrorist group, plans to hijack the plane in Karachi. The plane takes off from Mumbai's Sahar International Airport and lands in Karachi, where the four Abu Nidal terrorists, disguised as security officers escorting a Libyan diplomat, hijack the plane. Neerja quickly alerts the cockpit, without the terrorists knowing, and the three American pilots escape through the overhead hatch, fleeing to the terminal under fire from the hijackers. The American pilots had just enough time to escape, as the hijackers did not realise that the cockpit of a Boeing 747 is located upstairs. When an Indian American passenger reveals himself as an American, one of the terrorists murders him and dumps his body off the aircraft in front of the Pakistani negotiators. The terrorists try to locate a radio engineer among the passengers by ordering Neerja to make an announcement over the intercom. When Imran Ali, a Pakistani radio engineer, begins to stand up, Neerja signals for him to sit down. The terrorists have the flight attendants collect all passports to identify the American passengers and hold them hostage; Neerja and her colleagues collect the passports, disposing of any American passports by throwing them down trash chutes or hiding them under seats. Dejected over not finding any American passports, the hijackers instead take a British passenger hostage. The Pakistani negotiators inadvertently reveal the name of radio engineer Ali, whom the hijackers bring to the cockpit to use the radio for negotiations. Meanwhile, the Pakistani authorities try to stall for time. When a younger terrorist assaults the passengers and molests the attendants, the terrorist leader chastises him; humiliated, the younger terrorist storms into the cockpit and shoots Ali, screaming wild threats over the radio. While negotiations with the Pakistani air controllers drag on, the negotiators slowly lose control of the situation, with the hijackers becoming more agitated by the minute. Meanwhile, Neerja, who had her birthday 2 days later, had an envelope and when she has kept away from other passengers, opens that envelope given to her by Jaideep, her friend, which was his love confession and a cookie, Neerja reads that and eats that cookie which symbolizes her acceptance of his love, but on a little sad note Jaideep never gets to know that she has accepted his love. Around 17 hours later, the plane loses auxiliary power, and the lights go out inside the plane. Despite Neerja and the other attendants' attempts to explain, the terrorists assume the Pakistanis cut the power deliberately, and anticipate an imminent Pakistani raid on the plane. The panicking hijackers begin shooting down passengers indiscriminately; at great peril to her own life, Neerja opens the emergency exit door and deploys the chute, directing passengers out of the plane. Choosing to let the passengers escape first, Neerja is shot three times by a terrorist as she tries to shield three young children from the gunfire. The children escape the plane, and Neerja then drags herself out of the doorway and down the emergency slide before dying. The film ends with a tribute to Neerja, who was eventually honoured posthumously with the Ashoka Chakra, India's highest military decoration awarded for peacetime valor, courageous action or self-sacrifice.
नीरजा
Neerja
Details
Mis Spell Name
- Nirja, Niraja, Neeraja, Neerjaa
Genre
- Drama, Biography
Production House
- Bling Unplugged,Fox Star Studios
Producer
- Atul Kasbekar, Shanti Sivaram Maini
Director
- Ram Madhvani
Composer
- Vishal Khurana
Censor Date
- 05/02/2016
Censor Year
- 2016
Released date
- 19/02/2016
Released Year
- 2016
Censor Board Details (Central Board of Film Certification)
Certificate No :
- UA 0000
Certificate Date :
- 05/02/2016
Office :
- Mumbai
Guage :
- -
Length :
- 10029 Feet 3343 Meters
Duration :
- 121 Minutes
Reels :
- 11
Color :
- Coloured
Native Language :
- Hindi
Dubbed Languages:
- Another Language
- Producer : Atul Kasbekar , Shanti Sivaram Maini
- Director : Ram Madhvani
- Story : Saiwyn Quadras
- Screenwriter- screenplay : Saiwyn Quadras
- Dialog Writer : Sanyukta Chawla
- Composer : Vishal Khurana
- Lyricist : Prasoon Joshi
- Actress : Sonam Kapoor , Shabana Azmi
- Actor : Shekhar ( Shekhar Ravjiani )
- Track 1 : Jeete Hain Chal ( जीते हैं चले )
- Track 2 : Aankhein Milayenge Darr Se ( आंखें मिलाएंगे डर से )
- Track 3 : Gehra Ishq ( गेहरा इश्की )
- Track 4 : Aisa Kyun Maa ( ऐसा क्यूं मा )