Indian army officer Lieutenant General Bakshi addresses a group of Indian soldiers on board the INS Viraat. The story flashes to the events preceding the 1971: India-Pakistan war. Sehmat is a college student from Kashmir. Her father and grandfather were Indian freedom fighters. She learns of her father's impending death from lung cancer and his last wish for her to continue the family tradition of being in service to the country. He arranges for her to get married to an officer, the son of an Army Brigadier in the Pakistani Army, who is promoted to Major General.

To prepare her to spy, Sehmat is hastily trained by members of RAW, India's external intelligence agency, in various skills. She learns the numbers to be used while contacting anyone from Pakistan and practices how to convert text information to Morse code, which she has to use while transmitting information to India.

After the marriage and migration to Pakistan, Sehmat quickly settles into her married life, adjusts to a new country, and establishes the trust and confidence of her in-laws. She also falls in love with her husband, Iqbal. She soon establishes communication channels with her handlers back in India and starts relaying information. Eventually, she spots information related to the planning of an offensive against India and, at great risk, is able to gather the necessary details and pass them on. One of the servants, Abdul, discovers the truth about Sehmat and rushes out to inform the others. She chases him and is forced to murder him to avoid exposing her cover. The event takes a heavy emotional and mental toll on her.

The information she passed on points to the planned attack on the Indian aircraft carrier INS Vikrant, then deployed in the Bay of Bengal and provided one of the initial warnings to the threat, which had bearing on the sinking of the submarine PNS Ghazi off Visakhapatnam's coast.

Sehmat is left with no choice but to also take out Iqbal's brother, another army officer, after he begins suspecting her about Abdul's death. She is eventually discovered as a spy by Iqbal, who is heartbroken by the revelation. She manages to escape with the help of her handlers, but at the cost of Iqbal's death. This and the discovery that her handlers had ordered her death should she be caught makes Sehmat realize the insignificance of relationships and humanity in this line of work. Broken by the destruction of a family by her hand and everything she has seen and had to do, Sehmat wishes to return home to India. After she does, it is discovered that she is pregnant with Iqbal's child. She says that she will keep him and raise him alone; the boy, Samar Syed, later joins the Indian Army.

• Alia Bhatt as Sehmat Khan
• Vicky Kaushal as Iqbal Syed
• Jaideep Ahlawat as Khalid Mir
• Rajit Kapur as Hidayat Khan, Sehmat's father
• Shishir Sharma as Brigadier Syed
• Soni Razdan as Teji Khan
• Amruta Khanvilkar as Munira
• Arif Zakaria as Abdul
• Ashwath Bhatt as Mehboob Syed
• Aman Vasishth as Nikhil Bakshi
• Kanwaljit Singh as older Nikhil Bakshi
• Sanjay Suri as Samar Syed (Son of Sehmat Khan)

Development

In December 2016, Meghna Gulzar had announced that her next film would be an adaptation of Harinder Sikka's novel Calling Sehmat. Meghna informed that in the year 2015, Priti Sahani, who is the President of Junglee Pictures, got in touch with her and told her about this project and asked if she would be interested in doing it. Although Meghna did agree to make the film, the project failed to take off. In February 2016, Meghna was again approached to adapt Calling Sehmat into a movie, this time by a different production house but once again talks didn't go through. After two failed attempts, Meghna decided to make a third one and approached Harinder Sikka, the author of Calling Sehmat, and Priti Sahani, only this time things fell into place and the project was given a go-ahead. In December 2016 it was being speculated that Alia Bhatt had been offered the lead role in Meghna Gulzar's next film, a news which was confirmed to be true in April 2017. Karan Johar's production house Dharma Productions came on board to co-produce the film along with Junglee Pictures in April 2017. It was officially announced in June 2017 that Vicky Kaushal had been finalized to play the role of a Pakistan army officer in Meghna Gulzar's Raazi.

Filming

The filming process of Raazi began in July 2017 and the first schedule which took place in Mumbai was wrapped up by mid-August 2017. Originally, the first schedule of Raazi was supposed to be held in Kashmir but due to the state of unrest in the valley, the makers decided to shift the shooting location to Mumbai where all the indoor scenes were filmed at a set created inside Film City. The second schedule of the film took place in Punjab, where filming was done in Patiala and Malerkotla during August and September 2017. The shooting in Patiala was stalled for a few days days due to the violence that erupted after the conviction of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh on 25 August 2017 and the curfew that was imposed as a consequence of which. After completing the Punjab schedule, the production team of Raazi arrived in Kashmir on 17 September 2017 for a ten day schedule where filming was done at Pahalgam, Shiv Pora in Srinagar and Doodhpathri in Budgam district.^[30][31] The final schedule of shooting was supposed to take place in Punjab but was completed in Delhi instead due to the unrest caused by Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh's arrest.^[32][33] The filming process of Raazi came to an end on 27 October, 2017.^[34]

The music and background score of the film is composed by Shankar–Ehsaan–Loy while the lyrics are penned by Gulzar. The songs featured in the film are sung by Arijit Singh, Harshdeep Kaur, Vibha Saraf, Shankar Mahadevan and Sunidhi Chauhan. The song "Ae Watan (Female)" also contains the lyrics of Allama Iqbal's dua "Lab Pe Aati Hai Dua", that is the national prayer of Pakistan being offered during school assemblies. The soundtrack was officially released on 18 April 2018 by Zee Music Company.

Vipin Nair of The Hindu gave the soundtrack 4/5 stating that it's "a gem of a soundtrack" and "wish the soundtrack were longer".^[37][38] The Times of India based Debarati Sen, in her review, said the album is "definitely one to be heard on the loop". She further added that it is a "must for music lovers and Gulzar fans".^[39]