Bhooth Bangla
Arjun Acharya inherits a cursed ancestral palace in Mangalpur, deciding to host his sister Meera's destination wedding there, which inadvertently triggers a violent supernatural awakening tied to their dark family history. Arjun Acharya travels from London to India after inheriting his family estate in Mangalpur, planning to host his sister Meera's wedding at the ancestral palace. Meera arrives with her fiancé Rahul, while their father Vasudev Acharya grows uneasy about the property and its history. On the journey, Arjun meets Priya, a writer researching sacred sites, who becomes drawn into the unfolding events. At the palace, caretaker Shantaram warns Arjun about an ancient curse tied to Vadhusur, a feared entity linked to missing brides. Arjun dismisses the warnings and begins renovations with wedding planner Jagdish Kewalramani and electrician Sunder Bajwa. As preparations continue, unsettling disturbances begin affecting the estate and nearby forest, pulling Arjun and Priya deeper into local legends. In the town of Mangalpur, a group of wedding guests is stranded on a deserted railway platform during a torrential downpour, waiting for a delayed train. They gather around a bonfire lit by an elderly mystic known to them only as Baba Ji and ask him why no marriages have taken place in the town for years. Baba Ji begins recounting the legend that once cursed the region, the tale of Vadhusur, a demonic immortal who abducts and kills newlywed brides on their wedding night. Years earlier, a wedding party traveling to catch a flight home from Lucknow is forced to reroute through Mangalpur because of severe flooding. Their bus driver, a local man, warns them never to bring newlyweds through the forbidden village, recounting the belief that a Rakshas kidnaps newly wed brides there. The group ignores him, and their bus suffers a puncture deep inside the forest. That night, their camp is violently attacked by an unseen creature that kidnaps the bride and leaves several others critically injured, with no memory of what happened. Sometime afterward, the respected local Dushyant Acharya dies under mysterious circumstances following forty days of self-imposed isolation, attributed to a supposed contagious illness. His aide, Kali, and the caretaker of his palace, Shantaram, discuss his final days and express unease about who will inherit the Acharya Palace, a vast, abandoned mansion long feared by the villagers. In London, Dushyant's grandchildren, Arjun Acharya (Akshay Kumar) and Meera (Mithila Palkar), live with their father, Vasudev Acharya (Jisshu Sengupta), a respected theologian. Preparations are underway for Meera's wedding to her fiance, Rahul, and because Meera's birth chart carries a manglik dosh, Arjun performs a Kadali Vivah ritual on her behalf, a symbolic marriage conducted over video call with a priest, before the real ceremony can proceed. Vasudev soon leaves for a work trip to Sydney, and a British lawyer, Richard Gardener, informs Arjun and Meera that Dushyant has left them the ancestral Acharya Palace in Mangalpur. Excited by the unexpected inheritance, and with their original wedding venue in Udaipur having fallen through, Arjun sees an opportunity to host Meera's destination wedding there and travels to India to inspect the estate. On the train journey, Arjun meets Priya (Wamiqa Gabbi), a writer researching ancient Indian temples, and saves her during an accident. Upon reaching Mangalpur, the caretaker Shantaram warns Arjun that the palace is cursed, that spirits roam its grounds at night, and that Dushyant himself never once stayed there after dark. Shantaram adds that three guards who previously attempted to stay overnight either lost their minds or took their own lives. Arjun dismisses the warning, spends the night inside unharmed, and concludes the stories are nothing more than superstition. While exploring, he discovers a sealed prayer room whose key has gone missing. Arjun hires laborers and brings in wedding planner Jagdish Kewalramani (Paresh Rawal), along with Jagdish's nephew, the electrician Sunder "Balli" Bajwa (Rajpal Yadav), to begin renovating the palace for the ceremony. Increasingly strange incidents begin occurring around the property. When Sunder mishandles a live wire, Arjun is electrocuted and briefly dies before Priya revives him with CPR. Sunder then becomes possessed and leads Arjun and Jagdish toward Vadhusur's temple, and Priya, driven by her own research into the site, convinces Arjun to bring her along as well. At the temple, the group witnesses a massive swarm of bats even in broad daylight and is forced to hide in the light as a figure resembling Vadhusur briefly emerges from the darkness. The family's spiritual advisor, Vashisht Guruji (Zakir Hussain), confirms to Arjun that the curse is real, though Arjun continues to resist the idea. Meera arrives with her in-laws for the wedding, and Vasudev, now back from his trip, urges Arjun to abandon the palace as a venue because of the curse. Together, Vasudev and Arjun search for the missing prayer-room key and uncover the family's buried history. Vasudev reveals that Dushyant had once served as the priest who kept Vadhusur dormant through nightly mantras, and that his son, Madhav, and his disciple, Vasudev himself, were both raised under Dushyant's guidance in Mangalpur, where Vasudev and a young woman named Yashodha (Tabu) fell in love. Madhav desired Yashodha as well. Dushyant had built a device that automatically played the sacred chants from sunset to sunrise to keep the demon asleep, believing that if Vadhusur failed to revive for thirty six thousand moons, he would perish forever. When Vasudev and Yashodha's marriage was arranged, Madhav sabotaged the device so that the mantras played in reverse, partially summoning Vadhusur in exchange for Yashodha's hand. Dushyant caught his son in the act and stopped him, but feared Madhav had not been freed from the demon's influence. Forced to obey his guru, Vasudev cruelly rejected Yashodha, leading her to believe he had never loved her at all. With her own family arriving and her father eager to see her married, Dushyant arranged her marriage to Madhav instead. Afterward, Dushyant abandoned the temple, fearing his son remained corrupted. Yashodha later discovered that Madhav was still partially possessed and fled to Vasudev, who rescued her, and the two left Mangalpur forever. Arjun then learns the final truth: Vasudev is not his biological father, and Arjun is in fact Madhav's son. Dushyant, it is revealed, had orchestrated the inheritance before his death in the hope that a final wedding at the palace would fully resurrect Vadhusur and, in doing so, free Madhav from serving as the demon's living vessel. It becomes clear that the hauntings, and the figure resembling Vadhusur, have all along been the work of the still partially possessed Madhav. Despite uncovering this truth, Arjun does not call off Meera's wedding. Instead, the family resolves to use the ceremony itself to end Vadhusur permanently, reasoning that if the marriage is completed before sunset and the couple crosses the Ganga at that same moment, the demon will be unable to reach the bride. When Rahul's father insists, on astrological grounds, that the ceremony must instead take place at night, Arjun angrily confronts him for nearly getting everyone killed, declaring that birth charts are written by men, not by gods, and the daytime muhurat is fixed. Around this time, Priya admits to Arjun that she has feelings for him but cannot accept them, revealing that she is already married, before quietly leaving him. Confused, Arjun reviews footage from their earlier visit to Vadhusur's temple and discovers that every photograph and video from that day shows him standing alone, with no trace of Priya at all, revealing that she was a spirit the entire time and very possibly one of the missing brides herself. On the day of the ceremony, every precaution is taken: the wedding is timed to finish before sunset, and the couple crosses the Ganga as planned. Even so, Vadhusur manages to abduct Meera in the final moments. After a series of failed attempts to reach her, Arjun ultimately succeeds in rescuing his sister before she can be killed, bringing Vadhusur's reign of terror to an end. The story returns to the railway platform, where the stranded travelers ask Baba Ji how Arjun was able to perceive the spirits haunting Mangalpur throughout the ordeal. The old mystic explains that when Arjun briefly died during the earlier electrocution, he gained the ability to see the dead, since only the dead can see the dead. He then reveals that he himself is Arjun, who remained in Mangalpur in the years that followed and has spent the past twenty four years performing rituals for the peace of his father Madhav's soul.
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