Ek Hasina Thi 2004 ~ Ramgopal Varma Thriller ~ Phantom

It is about a travel agent called Sarika ( Urmila Matondkar) who meets and falls for a mysterious businessman Karan Rathod (Saif Ali Khan in his first negative role). After Karan involves Sarika in looking after a suitcase full of illegal firearms belonging to his friend, a hit man, she is arrested for having links with the underworld and is remanded to judicial custody. Karan sends Kamalesh Mathur to her, a defense attorney, seemingly to fight her case, but who in fact tricks her into confessing that she knew the hit man and was acting of her own free will. The judge sentences her to 7 years hard lab our without parole. Sarika then realizes that Karan is actually an associate to the underworld and that he had her framed to keep police eyes away from himself. She finally escapes from prison with help of another prison-inmate. The way she is made to confess to a crime she did not commit, the portrayal of the hard life in prison and her friendship to a prison inmate who ultimately helps her escape the prison seems to be inspired from the novel If Tomorrow Comes by Sidney Sheldon. Once outside, she begins to plot revenge on Karan. Not only does Sarika want to kill Karan, she wants him to suffer and wants to humiliate and frighten him. First she kills Mathur and throws his body off the balcony of his multi-storeyed flat. Karan remains oblivious to the fact that the murder could have been done by Sarika, even though he knew that she had escaped from prison. He blames the murder on rival gangs. Sarika then books a hotel room immediately next to Karan's and follows him for days. Karan is staying with a new girl in his hotel room, and she watches him and this girl go shopping, dining, swimming, and enjoy life as a whole. However one evening Karan is whisked by underworld men to meet their leader and Sarika follows them. Karan meets Sanjeev, brother of underworld don Nanda. Sanjeev is shown counting a huge booty of cash. Sarika watches Karan and Sanjeev exchange heated words through an open glass window. Karan leaves Sanjeev's room after a while and returns to his hotel. Half an hour later, Bilall, an aide of Sanjeev, getting no response from Sanjeev's room decides to check for himself. Bilall is shocked to see Sanjeev murdered, and the entire load of cash missing. Everything points to Karan being Sanjeev's murderer. The underworld's begins to hunt down Karan. Sarika, whose long patience has paid off, enjoys this moment. Not content with Karan hurt and frightened, Sarika meets Karan when he was trying to elude hit men sent to kill him. She pretends to be still in love with him, feigns surprise and happiness. She offers him refuge in her hide-out, so that she can enjoy his misery first hand. Karan feels that he has been framed by Bilall and goes after him. After he has killed him, police come and arrest him. They interrogate him about Sarika who they think are involved with him since they were staying at the same hotel and since they feel that she has killed Mathur. The realization that Sarika was there with him at the hotel, leads Karan to finally realize that Sarika is the person who framed him. However, before the police can take him to the police station, he manages to escape during a shoot out between the police and Nanda's men who have come after him. Karan then takes Sarika forcefully to Nanda, Sanjeev's elder brother, but a police raid cuts short their heated exchanges. Sarika escapes, as does Karan, but Sarika manages to take him hostage in his car. At gunpoint Sarika asks Karan to drive to some hills miles away from the city. She takes him inside a cave, knocks him unconscious and ties him with chains to the rocks. On regaining consciousness, Karan finds himself captive, and Sarika leaving him after telling him that she had searched for days to find such a place for him to die slowly in. She leaves her torchlight. Once the light from the torch goes out, rats come out and begin to attack him, as Karan used to tease Sarika for her fear of the pests. Karan dies a long and painful death. Sarika voluntarily returns to jail as she had had the pleasure of killing Karan in the manner she desired.