Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Shreya Dhanwanthary, Snigdhadeep Chatterjee

Director: Soumik Sen

Rating: *1/2

'Why Cheat India' which was earlier titled as 'Cheat India' is a film about the corrupt education system of our country and it's loopholes used by some manipulative money-minded people.

The narrative begins circa 1998. Satyendra Dubey aka Sattu (Snigdhadeep Chatterjee) is a studious boy from Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, who studies in Kota, the hub of coaching classes for competitive exams. On successfully clearing his exams, he is abounding by offers, mostly by dubious people running coaching classes.

Soon, he gets lured by the smooth operator Rakesh Singh aka Rocky (Emraan Hashmi), a con-man who runs a flourishing business that allows education scams to flourish in the country.


His modus operandi is to enroll bright students to crack the question papers or write proxy exams for rich spoilt students who are unable to score. Alternately, he is a genius in producing fake documents or degrees. How Rakesh Singh gets exposed, forms the crux of the narrative.

The first half of the film is engaging and manages to build a strong setup but in the second half film indulges in romantic angle and the grip over the plot was loosened.

Emraan Hashmi plays the classic anti-hero Rakesh Singh to the hilt. He is a charmer and is sincere in his performance despite being a rotter, bounder and an opportunist.


Snigdhadeep Chatterjee as Sattu and Shreya Dhanwanthary as Sattu's sister and Emraan's love interest Nupur were good in their debut project.

The music of the film has not made any impact. The direction of Soumik Sen can't be blamed completely because he didn't have a strong script.

Though the narrative was good the writing was too weak and failed to lift the film despite having good acting performances by the actors.

Overall, 'Why Cheat India' is a film which is thought-provoking and could have left a long lasting impression if the writing team had done some sort of cheating and had put some more efforts in it to clear this test.