The ending of Salakaar was largely centered around Adhir Dayal extracting Srishti Chaturvedi from the clutches of Ashfaq Ulla. But since the whole show was split into two time periods, the finale also dealt with two different missions. In 1978, Adhir was sent by RAW as a regular employee at the Indian Embassy in Pakistan to look into the nuclear project that Zia Ulla was overseeing in Kahuta. He colluded with some Afghani terrorists to orchestrate an attack on Zia’s one and only grandson, Ashfaq, thereby putting him in Zia’s innermost circle. As Adhir gathered intel about Zia’s plans to make a nuclear bomb, Zia became increasingly suspicious of India’s involvement in the Afghani terror attack and had Jyoti killed. Realizing that the noose around his neck was tightening, Adhir traveled all the way to Kahuta to put an end to the nuclear weapons program. In 2025, thanks to Srishti, who was the granddaughter of Jyoti, Adhir had learned Ashfaq had restarted the Kahuta project with the help of China’s PLA. While he took a diplomatic approach to shut down the nuclear plant, he had to take a more hands-on approach to get Srishti out of Pakistan before Ashfaq learned that the woman he wanted to wed was an Indian spy. Did he succeed in either of these endeavors? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Kahuta Plant Was Destroyed
In the 1978 section of the finale of Salakaar, Adhir joined hands with a local of Kahuta named Noor, who had suffered personal losses due to the nuclear project. Zia’s pet project was responsible for dumping nuclear waste without any care for the people living in Kahuta and also extracting huge amounts of water to create the coolant that’s required for nuclear reactors. Adhir and Noor killed the two soldiers who were supposed to transport water from a reservoir to the plant and took their places. As per the advice of one of the top scientists of DRDO and ISRO, Kalam, Adhir then proceeded to contaminate that water—so that it’d increase the temperature of the coolant—and delivered it to the plant. Things went according to plan, and the coolant began to heat up because of the corrupted water. That meant that Adhir and Noor had only a few seconds to get out of the blast radius. They were almost caught red-handed as they tried to escape from the plant, but Adhir compelled Noor to not look back and keep walking. The scientists were so shocked by what was happening that they couldn’t figure out on time that the coolant had been contaminated by outside forces. So, they ended up being sitting ducks when the explosion went off inside the plant. Zia was present there for the demonstration too. But, surprisingly enough, everyone was able to walk away with only a few minor cuts and bruises. Adhir and Noor were also thrown several feet up into the air. However, other than a brief ringing in their ears, they weren’t seriously injured.
Some Real-Life Inspiration?
A wide shot of Kahuta showed that the explosion was massive. Hence, you must be wondering how all of these guys survived. Well, that’s because you are thinking logically. Salakaar isn’t logical. It wants Adhir to “aura farm” at every second. In a realistic show, everyone in Kahuta should have been turned to ash. At the cost of sounding repetitive, this is a fantastical show made for people who are still under the impression that the country is in the hands of “gigachad” geniuses. Anyway, coming back to the plot, by the time it clicked for Zia that Adhir was the one behind this attack (because Adhir had left a note for him), Adhir, along with the rest of the Indian Embassy, had returned to India to celebrate Diwali. Hence, all that Zia could do in retaliation was destroy his furniture and house decorations. Now, as far as I know, in the 1980s, India did plan to bomb Kahuta with the help of Israel (these guys are always at the scene of a crime or a potential crime), but then the US told us to pipe down. Therefore, a nuclear conflict was averted. The show has probably tried to imagine what might’ve happened if India actually did a covert strike on Kahuta. That said, the showrunners don’t see it all the way through to its bitter end, right? If Zia had proof that an Indian agent had blown up his nuclear plant, we should have seen him preparing for an attack on India or, at the very least, treating it as an act of terrorism. Instead, he just broke a chessboard, while Adhir bid goodbye to Noor and then got his next mission from his boss, Sanjeev Mehra. Oh sorry, I was trying to think logically again. My bad.
Srishti Was Extracted From Pakistan
While the 1978 part of the plot of Salakaar was somewhat competent, the 2025 section was laughably bad. Here’s what happened. Srishti, with the help of her high-tech glasses that seemed like they belonged to the Mission: Impossible franchise, had already transmitted photographs and documents of the work Ashfaq was doing with the PLA to restart the Kahuta Nuclear Power Plant to RAW. So, her work was technically done. But since she had entered a romantic relationship with Ashfaq, he wanted to meet her parents before marrying her. Srishti had tried her best to go ahead with the marriage without introducing her parents, in the hopes that she’d escape during or after the marriage ceremony. However, Ashfaq didn’t want to go ahead with the wedding proceedings without Srishti’s parents’ blessings. Hence, Adhir ordered Srishti to arrive at the airport, along with Ashfaq and his army of security guards, under the pretext of welcoming her parents and then taking a trip to the loo. One of the stalls in the ladies’ bathroom had a burqa so that she could get out of there untraced. Srishti destroyed her phone, put on the burqa, and left the airport. But that was only the first part of the extraction operation. For the second part, she was assisted by a RAW agent, Kabir Ahmad (I don’t think that’s his real name), who pretended to be her husband, and they boarded the flight headed to India. In the meantime, Ashfaq got the information that his Chinese allies were backing out of the nuclear deal after being pressured by Adhir. That brought Ashfaq to the realization that a conspiracy was afoot, and he turned the airport upside down to nab Srishti. At the end of Salakaar, Ashfaq tried to stop the plane that Srishti was on from taking off, but since Adhir was its co-pilot, he quashed Ashfaq’s order and advised the pilot to take to the skies, thereby saving Srishti from the clutches of her almost-husband.
Adhir’s Redemption
Now, as far as my amateur research goes, the real-life counterpart of Ashfaq Ulla isn’t in politics or in charge of any nuclear projects. Of course, Pakistan has several operating nuclear plants and nuclear sites, which have been constructed with China’s support. Is there any way of knowing whether the real-life counterpart of Adhir sent a RAW agent to romance the real-life counterpart of Ashfaq to gain knowledge about China’s involvement in Pakistani nuclear projects and then led an extraction mission? No. Hence, for the time being, I’m labeling all this as a product of showrunner Faruk Kabir’s imagination. You don’t even need to take this with a grain of salt; you can just discard it for being a shoddy piece of propaganda. From a purely thematic perspective, you can see that this subplot was about redemption. Adhir couldn’t save Jyoti. Yeah, he murdered her killer, Mohseen, but that didn’t bring back Jyoti. In the present day, he was watching history repeat itself, and he didn’t want to lose Srishti at the hands of Ashfaq. That’s why he moved heaven and earth to get her out of Pakistan unscathed. How did Adhir, a man whose face is plastered all over the internet, manage to make it all the way to Pakistan without a disguise, you ask? Well, you are again applying logic to a nonsensical show like Salakaar. This is a show that’s hoping that its chest-thumping nationalism is going to cover up all the plot holes and poor writing. So, what’s the point of trying to explain how the show’s version of international espionage happens when the show itself doesn’t care about treating such a topic with any degree of realism? Just go with the flow and allow the jingoism to wash over you. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the ending of Salakaar. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
