Khauf, the 2025 Prime Video original, creates a concoction that combines supernatural elements as well as occurrences that could be termed as real-life horror. The show makes us intimately familiar with how a woman who walks alone on the streets of the national capital of India feels. How uncomfortable the male gaze is, how she feels intimidated by those lecherous looks, and what she does to make sure that she reaches back home safely. There are many incidents throughout the show where we’re shown that, according to the narrow mindset of the so-called alpha males, it is always the woman who is at fault. A woman who is involved in prostitution is characterless, but a man who pays her for her services is not. A woman who wears skimpy clothes does not come from a respected background, but a man who makes her uncomfortable can boast of his morals and values. And let’s not get started about the kind of discrimination girls from the Northeastern part of the country face. This is the hypocrisy of the society we live in. So let’s find out what happened in the horror series and whose ghost was haunting the girls in the Pragati working women’s hostel.
Spoiler Alert
Did Nakul Actually Sexually Abuse Madhu?
Madhuri Kiran, aka Madhu, came to Delhi to make a fresh start. There were disturbing things that happened back in Gwalior, her hometown, that made her want to escape the place. Madhu had been in a relationship with Arun since her college days, I suppose. Arun moved to Delhi a couple of years before Madhu did, and so he often used to come back to Gwalior to visit her. One time, Madhu was hosting the farewell function for her seniors at college when she took a picture of herself and sent it to her boyfriend. Arun, just to show off in front of his friend, sent him that picture, telling him that he was dating her. That friend betrayed Arun’s trust, and he forwarded that same picture to multiple WhatsApp groups. Nakul also got that picture, and that’s when he decided to pay Madhu a visit. Actually, Nakul, back in the day, when Madhu was still in school, used to stalk her. He used to send her all sorts of gifts and letters written with his own blood, but he never showed his face to her. I believe that Nakul suffered from an inferiority complex, and he felt that Madhu would reject him the moment she saw him. Nakul often used to cry about how his seniors bullied him. Madhu was never interested in him, and so apparently, Nakul victimized himself and felt that he was being used by her. When he got that picture of her, he decided to take revenge for what she had done to him. He went to her college with his two friends and forced themselves on Madhu. Such was the hypocrisy of society that a girl who had been violated couldn’t tell others about it, because deep down she knew that she might be held responsible.
So, Madhu moved to Delhi, but she still had problems sleeping. She still had nightmares about that horrifying night. She still woke up in the middle of the night sweating and panting. Then one day Madhu saw Nakul, who happened to be the fiancé of one of her very close friends, Bela. The boys were wearing masks that night, but Madhu had heard them addressing the leader of the gang as “Nakul bhaiya.” The problem was that Madhu didn’t trust her own judgment. She didn’t know what was real and what was not. Madhu was not in the right state of mind, and there came a time when she felt attracted to Nakul, as he was being really supportive and understanding. She shared an intimate moment with him, something that she later regretted. She had almost believed that Nakul was innocent when the latter’s friends came and addressed him in that same manner, like they had on the night they raped Madhu. It was a déjà vu moment for Madhu, and she realized that it was Nakul after all who had violated her.
During Khauf’s ending, Nakul did confess to his crimes, rather arrogantly, and decided to kill Madhu, as she had become a liability for him. Madhu would have been killed that day, but something unprecedented happened that even she didn’t know how to explain. Madhu felt a surge of power within her. She killed Nakul’s friends and then ran back to her hostel. That same supernatural power made Nakul so restless and paranoid from within that he ended up taking his own life on the day of his wedding. One could say that it was Nakul’s regret that made him jump from the window, but I do not think so. Though the fear of him being exposed was bothering him, it was Madhu’s supernatural power that pushed him to take his own life.
Did Anu actually take her own life?
Something unprecedented had once happened in room 333 of the working women’s hostel, because of which Madhu was feeling an evil presence. Komal, Rima, Lana, and Nikki still stayed on the same floor, and they warned Gracie Dhung Dhung, the warden, about the consequences of letting another girl stay in that room. At the beginning of Khauf we saw that a girl named Anu stayed in room 333 and apparently took her own life by jumping in front of a speeding truck. Another peculiar thing that happened was that the moment the other 4 girls stepped outside the premises of the hostel, they started to feel like some supernatural power was trying to pull them back. Where Lana felt that she was being strangled, Rima, who was pregnant at that time, felt an excruciating pain in her belly. Also, Lana ended up with marks on her neck, which made it very clear that whatever was happening was not their imagination.
So the four girls were trapped inside the hostel, but what the warden wasn’t able to understand was why the ghost of their own friend would want to hurt them. The warden knew that the girls were hiding something from her. After Madhu came to stay in that room, she started feeling the presence of another entity there. Gracie happened to be very good friends with a constable named Ilu Mishra. Ilu’s son, Jeeva, had been missing for quite some time, and she got to know that he was working at a so-called doctor’s clinic, who happened to be an expert in dark esoteric practices. Ilu felt that Gracie could use his services and get him to check Anu’s room and find out if there was actually a ghost or not. The so-called doctor arrived, and he told Gracie that he felt the presence of an evil entity inside the room, and that the life of the girl who stayed there was in danger. After Madhu killed Nakul’s friends, and her physical health started deteriorating to the extent that it became visible to everybody, Gracie decided to take matters into her hands and get to the root of the matter. That’s when the girls revealed what had actually happened in that room and why they hadn’t been able to leave the hostel premises. So, Ilu’s son, Jeeva, often came to the hostel to do odd jobs like painting the walls. Jeeva felt that stalking, eve teasing, and objectifying girls were the most natural things to do. He often harassed girls on the way to the hostel, but one day he crossed the line. Anu was going through a rough phase in her life, as she had gotten to know that her boyfriend had cheated on her and gotten engaged to someone else.
It was New Year’s Eve, and Anu was on the verge of losing her temper. Jeeva, as usual, teased her on her way back, and then Anu challenged him to enter the hostel. One thing led to another, and due to Jeeva’s inappropriate behaviour, Rima and the other girls ended up burning Jeeva alive. Then they disposed of his body in the nearby river, and months later, his charred body was recovered by the local police. It was the ghost of Jeeva that was haunting the girls. He first possessed Anu and made her jump in front of the bus, and then used his powers to stop the other girls from leaving the campus. Well, taking the law into one’s own hands always sets a bad precedent but in that particular situation the girls got triggered, and had they not retaliated, that boy would have done something to them. We saw how he confidently barged in and forcefully kissed Anu and then started hurling abuses at them. He used the worst possible words, and Rima just couldn’t resist her impulses. Nikki also tried to leave the hostel, and she too faced the wrath of a vengeful spirit. Jeeva’s ghost wanted to possess Madhu and take her soul to the supernatural realm. He was only helping her out to lure her into his trap. But then the doctor had certain different plans, and he too wanted to use the powers of Jeeva’s spirit to his advantage.
What did the doctor want from Madhu?
The girls, i.e., Rima, Lana, Nikki, and Komal, desperately wanted to escape from the hostel, and there came a point in Khauf when they were ready to go to any extent. They got in touch with the doctor, who told them to administer small doses of the medicine he gave them to Madhu by spiking her tea if they wanted to get out of there alive. The doctor was suffering from some terminal illness, and he believed that by sacrificing the lives of the innocent girls, he could save his life. The moment the doctor entered room 333, he knew that the ghost was present there, and Madhu, whose body he wanted to use as a vessel, could help his cause. The girls too were so scared that they didn’t think about what they were doing, as the only thing that mattered to them was saving their own lives. When all hell broke loose and Jeeva’s ghost possessed Madhu, the doctor finally came to the hostel and used the situation to his advantage. Madhu, possessed by Jeeva’s spirit, had assaulted Arun, her boyfriend, at his place, and then had come to the hostel to kill the girls. Madhu was a strong girl, and she was able to put up a fight against the evil spirit. Jeeva’s ghost wanted to take her with him, but Madhu resisted, and she was able to throw the spirit out of her body. It was at that moment that the spirit entered the doctor’s body, and he felt a surge of energy like he’d never had before. The doctor would have killed the girls, but Madhu arrived just at the right time and beheaded him.
Was Jeeva’s Spirit Still In The Hostel?
Gracie was killed by the doctor, and even Ilu was assaulted by him. Ilu had a hard time dealing with the fact that her son was dead. Her son was possibly the worst man in existence, but she was still his mother, and it was difficult for her to accept that he deserved that kind of fate. The doctor, due to his superstitions and belief in black magic, had destroyed the lives of many young girls and given them the most painful death. Even the psychologist, Shohini Verma, was surprised when she saw the plight of the girls. She at first felt that they all were going through some collective mental disorder, but when she saw Nikki dying in front of her eyes, she realized that it was not so. So the reason behind asking the question if Jeeva’s ghost was still out there was because that one ending scene where Madhu looked into the camera, made me feel like she was still under the influence of some evil entity. Also we never came to know if the spirit transcended to another realm after the doctor was killed or not. After Nakul jumped from the balcony and supposedly took his own life, Madhu looked right into the camera, and she remarked how, even with so much poison flowing through her veins, she was able to overpower her nemesis and defeat him at his own game. She realized how any man who disrespects women is always scared of getting exposed. There was a point when Madhu was scared by every lecherous stare and by every comment, but after what had happened with her, I believe she had realized that in order to survive in a misogynistic world, one had to be tough.
Though Khauf’s ending didn’t reveal what exactly happened to Jeeva’s spirit after the doctor was beheaded, I believe that he won’t haunt the girls anymore. The reason for me coming to that conclusion is very simple: the ghost preyed on the fears of the girls, and its vengeance stemmed from the fact that it considered women to be inferior to men. Just like any other man, it underestimated the resilience of the girls and what they were capable of doing. It put itself in a position of authority just like the so-called alpha males. For me, the ghost was symbolic of every patriarchal mindset, of every lecherous man, of every misogynistic ideology that exists in our society. Maybe as an audience we got scared by seeing the evil spirit, but the girls face that horror on an everyday basis. It was haunting to witness a man ejaculate onto Madhu’s dress, and I don’t think there could be greater trauma than being subjected to that kind of abuse. I believe that Madhu had understood how the world functioned and that she needed to fight at each and every step. She had realized that she needed to see her perpetrators in their eyes and make them pay for what they had done. As for Arun, he was still in a critical situation, but I think that once he recovers, he will have a happy life with Madhu, and together they will leave their fears and traumas behind.
