Joy (52) is a crime editor for Despatch, a Mumbai tabloid. Both Joy and the newspaper are desperate to keep themselves relevant in the new age of technology and social media. There are talks of Savera, a big media house taking over the tabloid. Joy asks Jeetu, his junior and confidante, to do a background check on Savera. Shetty, a Diesel Smuggling Kingpin has been shot dead in broad daylight by six assailants, and Joy needs to solve this case to prove that he is still the master of the game. Prerna (30), Joy’s junior at office and lover is helping him write his book on Mumbai’s underworld and gangwar. Joy has an estranged relationship with his wife Shweta (36). Pretty, upscale and business journalist at a leading daily, Shweta finds Joy’s frustrations invalid. Their marriage has hit rock bottom. Joy gets a tip about Sangli, a Shetty’s killer, from one of his informers and forwards it to the cops. He hopes to get an exclusive breaking story of Sangli’s arrest. The police raid goes wrong, and Sangli almost manages to escape but Joy tackles him down. Sangli lands a blow and breaks Joy’s nose but is caught by the cops. Joy and Prerna have decided to get a house together, but the meeting with Society’s president goes horribly wrong when Prerna loses her cool. Joy and Prerna have a massive fight in the car and Prerna’s underlying frustrations come out. She throws him out of the car. Joy visits the police station and his access with cops gets him time alone in a cell with Sangli. It is revenge time. Joy starts bashing Sangli up, wanting to know who ordered Shetty’s killing. Sangli doesn’t have the answers Joy is looking for, and offers him a solid piece of information, instead. About a month ago, Sangli had been contracted to steal a file from the Enforcement Directorate, and he accidentally killed a guard during the robbery. Apparently, GDR had been raided, run by two Builder-brothers who were involved in the 2G scam. However, they knew about the raid beforehand, and had burnt all the hard-drives and files, so the officials could only get their hands on a couple of them. These were the files Sangli had been contracted to steal, and he was paid very good money for the job. This information of the theft and murder at the government office has not been made public. Joy, the crime journalist, smells something fishy and decides to check it out. He sells the story idea to his boss. Joy meets Noori Rai (39), Joy’s former colleague and lover, to find out more about the 2G scam. She tells him that is only a front and is owned by an unknown powerful man. She also tells him Nisha Lodha, the woman in the news about the tapes leak around the 2G scam, is in serious trouble. Noori warns him to not get involved in the matter. Joy decides to go to Delhi to find out more. Before leaving he pays Prerna a visit and tells her that he has cancelled the book deal with the publisher, and plans to take it somewhere else. Prerna is angry that he decided to take that step without taking her into confidence. The evening doesn’t end well. Joy finds out from an informer that the data stored on cloud servers at a third party office called Softlay had also crashed on the same day as the robbery. At home Shweta tries to have sex with Joy. She hopes a child will solve their marital woes… a last throw of the dice. Joy is angry and leaves. Joy reaches Delhi and posing as an investigating officer pays a visit to Softlay. He discovers the involvement of Iyengar, the body’s IT Director, in the crash. While in Delhi, he decides to visit Mary Joseph, a publisher he has sent his script to. Mary praises Prerna’s writing skills but is not too thrilled about Joy’s content. Joy reaches his hotel to discover that Shweta has followed him to Delhi and is going through his stuff. Joy tells her he wants a divorce. Outside, he meets Iyengar and threatens him into revealing that the theft and data crash was ordered by Mukhtar from D-Company. Joy meets Ameel bhai, a retired underworld gangster, to help get in touch with Mukhtar. While Ameel bhai is trying to get hold of Mukhtar on the phone, the house is attacked with a warning. Ameel asks Joy to leave Delhi the same night and forget about the whole matter. Joy takes Noori’s help to fix a meeting with Nisha Lodha. He offers to help Nisha with an exclusive story to bring out her truth to the world. She tells him that she is alive only because she has kept her mouth shut and can give Joy the information that he wants if he can get her the stolen file. Back in Mumbai, Joy tells his boss claiming he has hit a dead-end with his investigation. He instead offers a new juicy development in the Shetty murder story. It was a gang- war after all, and Shetty had an affair with a real estate developer Suresh Contractor’s wife, who had ordered the killing. Things are not right between him and Prerna. He tells her about his meeting with Mary - they need to work on the writing because the content is very good. He also informs her of the divorce conversation with Shweta. They go for dinner to his mother and sister’s house, but Prerna is disgusted by Joy’s family. The takeover of the newspaper goes through, and at the office party Prerna and Joy end up having an argument, and a realisation dawns that things are going downhill. At office, the parents of a young sailor visits Joy. Their son had been killed in the gang-war that led to Shetty’s death. Their son, who was working at the oil rigs, had complained to his seniors about the smuggling racket run by Shetty and ended up dead. The couple hand over all the evidence their son had collected to Joy. Joy sets up a meeting with Suresh Contractor with Noori’s help. He blackmails Contractor, with the information about the young sailor’s murder and asks for an apartment in exchange for burying the information. Joy takes Prerna to the swanky new flat in Worli, and tells her that he leas it cheaply from a friend who had moved to the US. Excited by the new house, they dream of a beautiful life together. Suddenly Joy realises that Contractor would have information about the theft, as it was ordered by D-company. He blackmails Contractor a second time, and gets to know that the file was stolen by D company on Wadhwa’s insistence. Wadhwa has been living in London, ever since his association with the CRICKET LEAGUE went south. Joy can’t understand what does Wadhwa have to do with the 2G scam. Both Noori and Joy realise that something massive is going on. Joy and Shweta meet at Shweta’s house in presence of a lawyer to finalise the divorce proceedings. Joy and Noori end up having sex at Noori’s house. They realise that the GDR link is very tough to crack. They think Sundaran, the man who was responsible for Wadhwa’s exit from the CRICKET LEAGUE, might be the man behind GDR. They decide that Silva, a senior cop who was close to Wadhwa, might be able to give them more information. To reach Silva, they have to go through Prasad, Noori’s friend and suitor, another seedy cop. Day prods Silva for more information on the theft and Silva retorts that Joy is out of depth as far as this case is concerned. He offers Joy a life-changing deal, for which he would have to go to London. Joy lies at work that he needs a break, and as he is leaving for London, Noori gives him a contact in case things go wrong. In London, Day meets Wadhwa, who tells him about the CRICKET LEAGUE connection - an industry to churn black money into white and the stolen GDR file has a detailed report of this entire matter and the name of the man behind it all. He tells Joy that when the time comes they would together plan a big exclusive story on this, and his lawyer in Mumbai would get in touch. While still in London, Joy gets a call from Iqbal Mirchi, Noori’s contact, who warns him that GDR and Rajan (D-company’s arch nemesis) is watching him and he needs to keep his neck out of the whole thing. Back in Mumbai, Joy learns that Prerna and Mary have been taking the book ahead but he has been kept out of loop. Joy is threatened again by Mirchi’s man. Day panics and calls Silva, who tells him that the news of his meeting with Wadhwa has somehow leaked, but they are trying to sort it out. One of Joy’s informants tells him that news of a Wadhwa-GDR patch up is floating around, and that Joy might be in trouble. At home he does some research about GDR’s background and arrives at the name Stonedome. He messages Silva that he knows about Stonedome and if he doesn’t hear back then he will publish this. Silva doesn’t respond. Joy’s book, co-authored by Prerna, is launched at an event in Mumbai, but he can’t care less at the moment. Just then, he receives a call from Prasad who tells him to run away as he is on a hit-list. He informs Prerna that there is big trouble and they need to skip town. They decide to meet in the evening as he has to tie some loose ends before he leaves. On the road, Joy notices he is being followed but he manages to shake off the tail. He meets Wadhwa’s Mumbai lawyer and blackmails him into handing over the stolen file. Outside he calls Noori and asks her to connect him to Nisha Lodha, and on a conference call Lodha asks both of them to fuck off. Noori is also shaken and disconnects. Day waits for Prerna, but she doesn’t turn up. He goes to his office and places the file in front of his boss Tarun and gives him a lowdown on the whole story. Tarun tells him this is too big, but asks him to file the story while he tries to get the new management to agree on publishing it. While Day is working on the story in office, Jeetu informs him that Savera is actually owned by Stonedome. Joy makes a run for it, and asks Shweta to meet him. He apologises and asks her to give him one last chance. Shweta cannot find it within herself to do that. Joy bids her goodbye and walks away. He notices his cab being followed by men on a bike. He tries to shake his tail and heads home to his mother and sister. He hands over his bank and investment details to his mother and asks her to take care of herself. He calls a lawyer friend to tell him that he will drop a file with him and collect it later and exits from the back entrance of his mother’s house. On his way, two bikes appear out of nowhere and a bike chase follows. Despite all his attempts to escape, they catch up with Joy. He is shot six times in broad daylight and left in the middle of the road to die.
After dabbling in radio, copywriting and acting, Kanu Behl studied at the Satyajit Ray Film and TV Institute, Kolkata, majoring in Film Direction. His first documentary 'An Actor Prepares' (2006) premiered in competition at Cinema du Reel, France. Next, he directed and produced the doc short 'Three Blind Men' (2007) for ZDF and ARTE, commissioned at the Berlin Film Festival. This was followed by 'Found Him Yet?' and 'Over Thresholds' (2008), documentary features commissioned by NHK, Japan. A Berlinale talent campus alumni and twice nominated for the Berlin Today Award, in 2010 Kanu dove into fiction. His first major foray was the critically acclaimed LSD (Love, Sex & Betrayal) which he co-wrote with Dibakar Banerjee. In 2014, his debut feature 'Titli' premiered at Un Certain Regard, Cannes, going on to win major 8 international awards including the NETPAC and the Best First Foreign Film (2015) from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics. His follow up short 'Binnu Ka Sapna' premiered at Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival and won the prestigious Student Jury Award.