Why Cheat India
Why Cheat India? is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language black comedy crime film written and directed by Soumik Sen. It features Emraan Hashmi and Shreya Dhanwanthary in the lead roles. The film was theatrically released on 18 January 2019. It received mixed reviews and was a box office bomb grossing just 8.66 crore against its 20 crore budget. Plot. Satyendra "Sattu" Dubey lives in a rented house in Kota, and is doing his coaching to crack an engineering entrance exam. After which, he returns to his house in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh where he lives with his parents , elder sister Nupur Dubey, and his grandmother. Sattu is shown to perform well in the examination and clears the exam with a rank of 287. To celebrate, Sattu and his friends visit a cinema hall, where they are told to leave their seats by a few politicians, who want the theatre to themselves . Rakesh Singh, who is also present in the same hall, refuses to do the same and gets into a fight leading to him getting arrested alongside Sattu, who gets caught up in the fight. After getting bailed out, Rakesh visits Sattu's house and gives his contact  number to him, asking him to call him as he has a proposition Sattu might be interested in. The next day, Sattu calls him at a restaurant and Rakesh asks him to give the entrance exams of candidates who want admissions in colleges in exchange for ₹50,000 per paper, which Sattu agrees to, this scheme earns him a lot of money. However, he begins to start spending it extravagantly as starts taking drugs and starts committing sins of the flesh. This scheme continues even after he gets admission in a college which he is later rusticated from as he  was caught consuming drugs, leading to his arrest. After getting bailed by Rakesh, he rehabilitates Sattu and hands him a degree, asking him to go to work in Qatar. After a few years, Rakesh meets Sattu's sister Nupur and they both develop a cordial relationship. One day, Nupur tells him that she wants to do an MBA in order to get promoted to a higher post, in response, Rakesh gets the MBA paper solved by a student working for him and calls Nupur to her office's parking area. When Rakesh reaches there and tells Nupur that he has  got the paper solved by another student, a police inspector arrests him for forgery in a sting operation. It is then revealed that Sattu committed suicide after being fired from his job after his degree was revealed to be fake, thus, this way he realizes Nupur is working with the police. Release. In January 2019, the film's title was altered due to a last-minute objection from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). Initially titled "Cheat India", it was released as "Why Cheat India". However, in Pakistan, it was released as "Cheat" with a runtime of 128 minutes  and in India with a runtime of 121 minutes. Reception. Critical response. The film got mixed reviews from critics. Shubhra Gupta writing for The Indian Express says " Why Cheat India is disjointed and disappointing, never quite knowing which side it is on, even as it spends time showing us how good students can be ruined by greed, and how parents can put killing pressure on their children in their struggle to break the vicious gap between present debt and potential income." she further says "The material is slender and too stretched over two hours, as it goes from engineering-medicine  into management, the holy grail." She concludes her review with "Finally, the villain is outed: it is the confused, contrived writing. Why cheat us the viewers?" Priyanka Sinha Jha of News18.com giving 3 stars out of 5 writes "Emraan Hashmi's shortcut to success is worth a watch. 'Why Cheat India' takes up a subject that is novel and immediately strikes a chord with practically anyone in India who has appeared for competitive exams. Unfortunately, though Director Soumik Sen, who’s also the writer of the film, fails to turn all this wonderful material into a compelling film. Why Cheat  India’s Achilles heel is its inability to infuse a powerful premise with the dramatic heft it required. The script does not rise above the research points and the writing is clumsy in parts. More often than not, there are easy and simplistic resolutions to tricky situations. The screenplay attempts to go in many directions and ends up going it goes nowhere. While trying to make the film something of a commercial potboiler and satire, Why Cheat India falls between the two stools it tries to stand upon." She ends her review with "However, because the film’s heart is  in the right place and its observations astute, Why Cheat India is worth a watch." Box office. Gaurang Chauhan of Times Now News criticised the film, writing "Why Cheat India has opened on a poor note at the box office. So much so, that it might turn out to be one of the lowest openers for Emraan Hashmi in recent times. Ironically, this is also one of his better-received films in recent times. The occupancy rate is only around 5 per cent for Why Cheat India." The domestic collection of the film is 8.66 crore. Soundtrack. The music of  the film is composed by Rochak Kohli, Guru Randhawa, Krsna Solo, Kunaal-Rangon, Agnee and Soumik Sen while the lyrics are penned by Manoj Muntashir, Kumaar, Kunaal Verma, Guru Randhawa and Juhi Saklani. 'Dil Main Ho Tum' first two lines are inspired from the song "Dil Main Ho Tum" from the 1987 film Satyamev Jayte (1987), originally composed by Bappi Lahiri, then recreated by Rochak Kohli.