The Tashkent Files

About the film

The Tashkent Files is a 2019 Indian Hindi-language conspiracy politicial thriller propaganda film written and directed by Vivek Agnihotri. It focuses on the mysterious death of former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. It is the first installment in Agnihotri's The Files Trilogy, followed by The Kashmir Files (2022) and The Bengal Files (2025). The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics.

Plot

Raagini Phule, a struggling journalist, receives a tip from an anonymous caller about investigating the suspicious circumstances surrounding Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri's death in Tashkent in 1966. Under government pressure, a panel of experts is formed, including Raagini herself, to examine the evidence.

The panel members, including politicians, historians, scientists, and journalists, fiercely debate the available material, drawing upon conspiracy theories, Cold War politics, and allegations of assassination. Ultimately, the film leaves the central mystery unresolved, raising questions about transparency and accountability in independent India.

Production

The film was announced in January 2018 as India's first "crowd-sourced" thriller, with director Vivek Agnihotri inviting the public to share material related to Shastri’s death. Books referenced include Political Mysteries by K. R. Malkani, Conversations with the Crow by Gregory Douglas, and the Mitrokhin Archive by Vasili Mitrokhin.

The first poster was released on 19 March 2019, announcing a 12 April 2019 theatrical release. The film was also made available on ZEE5.

Agnihotri described it as the first installment of his trilogy of "untold stories of independent India," followed by The Kashmir Files (2022) and The Bengal Files (2025).

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was composed by Rohit Sharma, with lyrics by Aazad, Sharma, and Vivek Agnihotri.

Reception

The Tashkent Files received overwhelmingly negative reviews. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 0% approval rating based on 8 reviews.

Devesh Sharma of Filmfare gave two and half stars out of five; it was a 'melodramatic' episode with loud and over the top acting coupled with bombastic dialogues. Sharma found the film to be biased against a certain political party and wondered about its release during the national elections, which were running concurrently.

Writing for Scroll.in, Nandini Ramnath found it to be a politically motivated work that did not have any rigor and failed to be an effective conspiracy thriller. Saibal Chatterjee, writing for NDTV rated the film with half star out of five — the research that went into the production was equivalent of a Google search film-making and overall, it was "junk." Jyoti Sharma Bawa, reviewing for the Hindustan Times rated it one out of five stars and reiterated Chatterjee. Mid-Day gave one and a half stars out of five — all the research that went into the work was derived from internet, esp. social media.

Adaptation

Who Killed Shastri?: The Tashkent Files is a non-fiction book by Vivek Agnihotri based on his research for the film. It was published in August 2020 by Bloomsbury India.

Key details