A 22 year old Neerja, played by Sonam Kapoor is a picture of beauty and free spirit who loves old songs and is a huge fan of Rajesh Khanna and his movies. This young girl from Mumbai has nasty memories of her brief marriage to Naresh, played by Kavi Shahtri who tortured her verbally, physically and mentally for not giving enough dowry and not being skilled to do household chores. She divorces him,
and soon manages to get a flight purser’s job at Pam Am.
On the fateful day of September 5 1986, Neerja is scheduled to be the chief purser on Pan Am 73, flying to New York via Karachi. The Abu Nidal group hatches a plan to hijack the flight in Karachi. The flight takes off from Mumbai and lands at Karachi, where the four terrorists are waiting to take over the flight in disguise as a diplomats security officers. Neerja uses her presence of mind and alerts the pilots, who lock the cockpit from inside. By the time the terrorists figure the cockpit is on the top floor, the pilots escape through an overhead latch.
The terrorists are enraged and ask for a radio engineer to help negotiate their demands. Meanwhile, one of the younger terrorist, molests the attendants and assaults the passengers. His aide reprimands him, and feeling humiliated he shoots the radio engineer and kills him. They ask Neerja and her team to collect the American passports so they can identify them and take them hostage. But Neerja secretly throws the passports under their seats or keeps it with her.
After a while the flights loses its auxiliary power and the lights go off. The terrorists panic, assuming it’s all planned by the Pakistani government and starts shooting the passengers. Neerja in a heroic turn opens the emergency exit and guides the passengers out while shielding three young children and gets shot herself.
Neerja is directed by Ram Madhvani and produced by Atul Kasbekar, Shanti Sivaram Maini, Bling Unplugged and Fox Star Studios. The music is composed by, Vishal Khurana.
