Udta Punjab 2016

Tommy Singh is introduced as Tejinder, a flamboyant Punjabi musician whose high-energy performances and lyrics often glorify risk, violence, and drugs. He moves through a world of luxury with an ostentatious crew that includes his uncle Tayaji and his cousin Jassi. The thrill of fame keeps him in the spotlight, and his appetite for cocaine seems endless. Yet the glamour masks a destructive pattern: his fame begins to cost him real-world consequences, including the loss of a music contract and a spell in jail. While behind bars, he encounters two devoted fans who reveal how his lifestyle has fed their own dangerous choices, even driving them to horrific acts driven by drug money. Their blunt admiration highlights a chilling truth: the music that fuels his fame has, in some eyes, become a catalyst for harm.

Upon his release, a transformed Tommy resolves to change his ways. But life spirals quickly in a new direction when a confrontation leads to a gunshot that injures Tayaji and forces Tommy and his crew to retreat to a remote farmhouse as Tayaji preps for an upcoming concert. The farm becomes a hinge point where personal history, duty, and danger collide, and it marks the beginning of a tangled cross-border struggle over the narcotics network that has long tainted Punjab.

Across the lanes of Punjab and its surrounding towns, a parallel world unfolds around Bauria, a migrant worker from Bihar whose dream of national hockey glory was crushed by tragedy. She ends up in Punjab, employed by a local landlord who uses agriculture as cover for drug trafficking. One night she uncovers a suspicious drug packet on the farm and decides to sell it, a decision that pulls her deeper into the net of the original traffickers. Her attempt to find a buyer backfires, and she is soon captured by the drug gang. In a brutal twist, she discards the packet into a well, but not before being forcibly kept at their house and subjected to abuse and exploitation. Her escape comes only after weeks of torment, leaving her with scars and a renewed resolve to survive and fight back.

In the neighboring town, Preet Sahni, a doctor who runs a rehabilitation center, becomes a pivotal voice in the fight against addiction. A junior policeman named Sartaj Singh knows the scale of drug smuggling that is allowed by higher-ups, yet the problem hits close to home when his brother Balli overdoses and ends up in Preet’s clinic. The two of them join forces—Preet using her medical expertise and Sartaj leveraging his on-the-ground experience—to uncover the roots of the drug supply that is plaguing Punjab. Balli’s reluctant admission to rehab further entwines the personal with the political, even as Sartaj’s senior officer Jhujar Singh begins to piece together the wider conspiracy.

A pivotal moment comes at Tommy’s concert, where he abandons a performance to deliver a pointed, almost sermon-like message about choosing one’s path. The crowd’s reaction—bottles hurled in anger—forces him to flee. He finds refuge in an old structure and crosses paths with Bauria, with whom he forms a fragile bond born of shared hardship. Yet their fragile connection is tested when Bauria is recaptured by the same drug gang. Tommy learns that an arrest warrant now shadows him because of the publicly visible disruption at the concert, and he sets out to locate Bauria, driven as much by guilt as by the growing, uncertain possibility of genuine feelings.

As the investigation deepens, the criminal network is revealed to be supported by a powerful elder figure, Virender Singh, who profits from the drug trade with the backing of influential political connections. The investigation accelerates as Preet and Sartaj gather evidence and work toward presenting a comprehensive report to the Election Commission to thwart the political machine’s ambitions. The narrative threads converge: Balli ends up in rehab, Jhujar Singh unflinchingly pursues the truth, and the drug racket’s web begins to come apart under pressure.

In the climactic sequence, Sartaj is taken to a farmhouse by the criminals, where he is beaten and forced to confront the brutal system that has ensnared so many. Tommy arrives with his own purpose—protecting Bauria and breaking the grip of the gang—leading to a tense showdown in which Sartaj uses force to topple the criminals and free those held captive, including Balli. Tommy helps Bauria escape, and Balli kneels in a moment of familial reckoning, his face a portrait of restrained emotion.

Ultimately, the government launches a formal inquiry into the corrupt machinery that fuels the drug trade, and Punjab experiences a broad crackdown on narcotics. In a final moment of quiet resilience, Tommy reaches out to Bauria from Goa, where his crew has gathered. As she stands by a sunlit beach, a foreigner enjoys the carefree moment nearby, and she answers with a name that carries weight and memory: Mary Jane. Tommy’s playful response that she is his life marks a bittersweet closure to their intertwined journeys, followed by a decision to swim into the present and leave the past behind.

Mary Jane

Bolded and italic emphasis throughout highlights the emotional arcs and thematic throughlines—the danger of glamorized violence, the human cost of drug trafficking, and the fragile hope that honest reform can bring. The plot threads—Tommy’s redemption arc, Bauria’s ordeal and escape, Preet and Sartaj’s pursuit of truth, and Jhujar Singh’s pursuit of justice—are interwoven to present a textured portrait of a society wrestling with addiction, power, and accountability.