Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3(2024)

Plot Summary

• In 1824, the daughter of Rakhtghat's Maharaja (Denzil Smith), Manjulika (Vidya Balan), is seen doing Kathak, which comes under the notice of the king, who drags her out and burns her alive on a pyre. However, Manjulika returns as a vengeful spirit and kills both the king and the man who burned her.200 years later, in 2024, Ruhaan Randhawa / Rooh Baba (Kartik Aaryan) enjoys deceiving people by claiming to be a ghost-buster. In reality, Rooh Baba only takes advantage of people's fear of ghosts to make money from them by telling them that random valuable items in their houses are cursed and offers to get rid of them. Tillu (Arun Kushwah) is Rooh Baba's assistant. Meera's (Triptii Dimri) uncle, the brother-in-law (Rajesh Sharma) of the current Maharaja of Rakhtghat, calls him to speak with Meera, who is dead now. When Meera arrives, Ruhaan is terrified, believing her to be a real ghost.In reality, Meera is alive, and her uncle captures his reaction on Meera's phone and blackmails Ruhaan, threatening to post the video online if he does not accompany them to Rakhtghat. If Ruhaan does their job, he will get paid Rs 1 Crores.With no other option, Ruhaan agrees. Upon his arrival, everyone is shocked to see him because he looks exactly like Prince Debendranath, the prince from 1824. The royal family currently lives in the horse barn in poverty due to the presence of Manjulika's spirit in the palace and has descended into poverty. Due to lack of any income the royal family is forced to take loans from their own people.Meera introduces Ruhaan to the current Rajpurohit, who confirms that Ruhaan is the reincarnation of Debendranath. According to Rajpurohit, 200 years ago Manjulika was the only child of the King and a princess. She was a skilled dancer and warrior. She was destined to rule. But then Debendranath was born from a servant, whom the King had sex with. When the time came, the King made Debendranath as the Prince, ignoring Manjulika's credentials. Manjulika killed Debendranath that night in rage, and the King burned her alive and her vengeful spirit now haunts the palace, responsible for several deaths including that of the King. Since then, Manjulika's ghost has lived in the palace, and in her room.The Rajpurohit trapped Manjulika's ghost in her room and locked it behind a Bhairava Kavach.The Rajpurohit (Manish Wadhwa) warns everyone not to go near Manjulika's room, advising that it should only be opened on Durgashtami by a royal family member reborn to rid them of the ghost. Believing that Ruhaan is the reincarnation of Debendranath, everyone moves back to the palace. Madhulika (Tripti Dimri) was the wife of DebendraNath back when he was the prince.In present time, Meera calls in a restoration team to work on the palace so it can be sold. Meera aims to sell the palace for Rs 1000 Crores after Ruhaan proves that there are no ghosts in the palace, when he opens Manjulika's room.Mallika (Vidya Balan), the team leader, begins showing signs of possession. Ruhaan believes that Manjulika's ghost is trying to kill him as there are several attempts on his life and Debendranath's portrait in the palace is also set ablaze mysteriously. Ruhaan plans to escape but realizes he needs to erase his video before leaving. While searching for it, he discovers Meera has secretly taken his photos, suggesting romantic feelings for him. She confirms this when confronted. Meanwhile, Tillu arrives and informs Ruhaan one of the clients they conned was related to ACP Rathore and now ACP is looking for Ruhaan.Ruhaan decides to stay but soon learns that Pandit Jagannath Shastri (Sanjay Mishra), Panditayaan (Ashwini Kalsekar), and Chhote Pandit Natwar (Rajpal Yadav) have been already living in Manjulika's room. They reveal they've been trying to scare everyone away so they could stay there in peace. It was Mallika who had confronted the scary events inside the palace and exposed the Pandit family. Ruhaan asks Mallika to pretend to be Manjulika, as he opens Manjulika's room in front of the entire village. However, Mallika gets possessed by the ghost of Manjulika and scares the villagers. But eventually she vanishes, and Ruhaan gets to claim that he has chased the ghost of Manjulika away from the palace.The restoration team takes over the room and accidentally breaks a wall, uncovering a hidden passage leading to another room sealed with the Bhairava Kavach. The Rajpurohit (Manish Wadhwa), curious, decides to research more about the palace's history.Desperate to sell the property, Raja Saab (Vijay Raaz) decides to break the Bhairava Kavach with Rooh Baba's help. Just as they open the door, the Rajpurohit arrives with a shocking news. He reveals that 200 years ago the king actually had two daughters Anjulika and Manjulika who despised each other.Despite knowing the palace's haunted reputation, Mandira (Madhuri Dixit) arrives as a prospective buyer to learn more about the estate. After she meets Mallika, strange events begin occurring. The Rajpurohit warns everyone to be cautious until Durgashtami, the day when Manjulika is expected to take her revenge.Mandira agrees to buy the palace for Rs 1000 Crores, but only the day of Durgashtami. Mandira is afraid to visit the temple. Another buyer Vicky Khanna (Shataf Figar) arrives to buy the hotel, and declares his plans to redesign the palace into a hotel. Both Mallika and Mandira are livid at his lack of sensitivity to tradition and heritage. He is attacked later that night and killed. Meera finds Mallika that night with the throne of the palace, threatening that the throne belongs to her. Ruhaan and Meera have several eerie encounters with both Mallika and Mandira, confused about which one is the real Manjulika.The Rajpurohit returns with sacred oil to destroy Manjulika's spirit, and the night before Durgashtami, they gather at the site where her body was burned 200 years ago. Mallika declares that she is Manjulika and takes Mandira captive. But when Ruhaan tries to burn Mallika with the sacred oil, Mandira starts to claim that she is Manjulika. Ruhaan cleverly manages to exorcise the spirit that had possessed both Mallika and Mandira, finally learning that it was not a female but actually a male ghost, that of Prince Debendranath, who was killed 200 years ago for his love of dance, cross-dressing, and disdain for his male identity.It is finally revealed that Anjulika and Manjulika had together conspired to have Debendranath killed to secure the throne. They had found that Debendranath was a cross dresser and a dancer. Once exposed to the king, the king ordered his ministers to burn him (Debendranath) alive for the disgrace.Following this, the king, knowing daughters did it to steal the throne, exiled them both from the kingdom and announced that Manjulika will be known for killing her brother brutally to the public and Anjulika's existence in history will be erased.Sometime later, Prince Debendranath's ghost killed the king and his guards. The Rajpurohit of that era then sealed Debendranath's spirit in the hidden room, secured by the Bhairava Kavach. He also made the same Bhairava Kavach in the door of Manjulika's room to cover up the truth about who the real ghost is. It was finally revealed that it was Debendranath's spirit that was causing all the disturbances by possessing his sisters' reincarnations, Mallika/Manjulika and Mandira/Anjulika, to trick everyone into killing them as Manjulika.Ruhaan corners Debendernath in the sacred oil, and Mallika & Mandira have the opportunity to burn the ghost. In the end, Mallika, Mandira and Debendranath's spirit share a heartfelt moment (and apologize to Debendranath) as Debendranath finally finds the peace he's longed for over two centuries.It is revealed that Mandira is not the real buyer. She is actually ACP Rathore, an undercover cop, who has come to arrest Ruhaan for his frauds as the fake ghost-buster Rooh Baba. Ruhaan, upon knowing this, faints out of shock.

Storyline

• 1824 Manjulika is burnt alive by a Maharaja but she returns to take revenge and haunts the palace.Two hundred years later in present time Ruhan cons people as Rooh Baba by assuring to free them from spirits.He has a visitor Meera and her uncle who ask him to accompany them to their palace haunted by Manjulika and promise him huge sum.Upon reaching he realizes that no one lives in the palace fearing the ghost and Meera and her family live in cowshed in poverty.The villagers give Ruhan shocking looks and he realizes from head priest that he is reincarnation of their king who was killed by his sister Manjulika.The village burns Manjulika's statute every year during a festival but this time a mysterious women Mallika enters the palace and claims o be a historian and during her research leads to a secret passage which the head priest asks not to open until Durga Asthami.But Ruhan,Meera and others open the door of secret passage where head priest arrives to tell that more havoc is waiting to come on the palace.As he finds that the king had two sisters who were jealous of him and wanted to kill him.But it's a mystery that who was actually Manjulika who killed him and the havoc arrives in form of Mandira whose waiting to enter the palace. — alex.mjacko@gmail.com