Mrityudaata

Mrityudaata movie poster for sale.

Featured here is an original Bollywood poster of the old 1997 action Hindi film written and directed by Mehul Kumar that featured the greatest superstar of Bollywood, Amitabh Bachchan in the lead role.

Produced by Amitabh Bachchan himself under his own production company called Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL), Mrityudaata (1997) also starred Dimple Kapadia, Karishma Kapoor, Arbaaz Ali Khan, Paresh Rawal, Mukesh Rishi, Deepak Tijori, Ashish Vidyarthi, Tiku Talsania, Avtaar Gill, Mushtaq Khan, Dinesh Hingoo and Vikas Anand in supporting roles, while Farida Jalal, Pran and Daler Mehndi made special appearances in the film.

A comeback film for superstar Amitabh Bachchan, who temporarily quit the film industry in 1992, Mrityudaata (1997) was a disaster at the box office.

Presented under the Liberty banner, Mrityudaata (1997) told the story of a highly skilled doctor called Dr. Ram Prasad Ghayal (Amitabh Bachchan), who has a 100% success rate of performing life saving surgeries on trauma patients. His life is turned upside down when his younger brother, an upright engineer called Bharat (Arbaaz Ali Khan) has a run in with corrupt politician Mohanlal (Ashish Vidyarthi). Mohanlal calls on mafia don Rana Tonga (Mukesh Rishi) to take care of Bharat, who is standing in the way of his corrupt multi-million dollar Pawanghat Power Project. Rana Tonga’s brother Raja Tonga (Deepak Tijori) hatches a plan to eliminate Bharat and marry his girlfriend Renuka Jain (Karishma Kapoor). The Tonga brothers falsely implicate Bharat in a rape and murder charge and then have him strangled by corrupt police inspector Danapani (Mushtaq Khan) in prison, making it look like a suicide. Bharat’s death devastates Dr. Ram Prasad Ghayal’s wife Janki (Dimple Kapadia), who dies of shock. Renuka Jain reluctantly agrees to marry Raja Tonga and Dr. Ghayal drowns his sorrows in alcohol. Despite becoming a chronic alcoholic, Dr. Ghayal is still able to continue his record streak of saving patients from critical trauma injuries. Corrupt politician Mohanlal has a disagreement on profit sharing with the Tonga brothers and tries to get Raja Tonga killed. When the latter is brought to the hospital in a critical state, Dr. Ghayal is called in to perform the live-saving surgery. Facing a moral dilemma, Dr. Ghayal decides to honor the Hippocratic oath and save the life of the man responsible for his brother and wife’s death. Renuka Jain fears Dr. Ghayal will not let go of the chance to avenge his family’s death and end up murdering her husband on the operation table. Hence, she does not give consent for the surgery. Dr. Ghayal proceeds without her written consent, violating the law. Mohanlal pays Dr. Ghayal’s assistant surgeon Dr. Siddiqui (Avtaar Gill) a large sum of money to murder Raja Tonga by turning off his life support. As a result, Raja Tonga dies and Dr. Ghayal is implicated and imprisoned for the murder. While in prison, Dr. Ghayal meets Professor Azad (Pran) who has also been falsely implicated for a crime against the nation. Professor Azad was an eyewitness to Bharat’s strangulation that was termed suicide and discloses the same to Dr. Ghayal. He tells Dr. Ghayal that the time has come when he must turn away from being a life saver and instead become a life taker (Mrityudaata) to avenge his brother’s death and root out corruption. The professor helps Dr. Ghayal escape from prison and the angel of death is born.

Printed and circulated during the first release of the film (somewhere in 1997), this Mrityudaata movie poster was designed and printed for publicity of the film in theaters but never ended up being used.

A striking close up photograph of superstar Amitabh Bachchan wearing the uniform of a commando is seen spanning the entire length of this original Bollywood poster.

Typography used in this old Amitabh movie poster is entirely in English, except for a translation of the title into Devanagari Hindi on the top right.

The soundtrack of Mrityudaata (1997) was composed by Anand–Milind, their only film with Amitabh Bachchan, while lyrics were written by Sameer. It featured the super hit song “Sadde Naal Rahoge To Aish Karoge (Na Na Na Na Re)” sung by Daler Mehndi & Sudesh Bhosle.