Bollywood movie, Mashaal, directed by Yash Chopra and written by Javed Akhtar was released on January 12, 1984. The movie starred Dilip Kumar, Anil Kapoor and Rati Agnihotri in lead roles while Vikas Anand, Avtar Gill, Gulshan Grover, Saeed Jaffrey, Annu Kapoor, Alok Nath, Amrish Puri, Madan Puri, Waheeda Rehman and Nitin Sethi also played important roles in the film. The hit melodious music of the film was given by the music director Hridyanath Mangeshkar while the songs were beautifully crooned by Kishore Kumar, Mahendra Kapoor, Shailendra singh and Lata Mangeshkar. The movie did well at the box office window.

The movie starts with an honest newspaper editor named Vinod Kumar ( Dilip Kumar ), who is dismissed from the job after writing against the influential gangster, S. K. Vardhan, in his newspaper. Vinod then relocates to the slums of the Bombay city alongwith his wife, Sudha verma ( Waheeda Rehman ). He also starts his own publication and starts writing against Vardhan once again. Some local goons headed by Raja ( Anil Kapoor ) creates problem for Vinod and his wife. But inspite of getting into a fight with them Vinod decides to adopts a positive approach and speaks politely to him.

Raja falls in love with a beautiful girl named Geeta ( Rati Agnihotri ). Raja takes Vinod’s wife to the hospital during a bombay bandh risking his own life. This creates a very good impact on Vinod and he ask him to study further and leave this ‘gundagardi’ and all. Raja goes to study further and after few years return to the slum. But he get shocked to see everything changed there. He learns that Vinod is now a criminal don. Raja wants to know what were the circumstances which forced Vinod to take wrong route.

The hit songs of the movie are:

1. Liye sapne nohaon mein chala hoon teri raahon mein zindagi aa raha hoon main
2. Holi aayi holi aayi
3. Footpaath ke hum
4. Mujhe tum yaad karna
5. Om namah shivaya