Actor Ankit Sagar on Playing Real-Life Money Launderer Javed Khanani

Director Aditya Dhar’s directorial Dhurandhar isfilled with characters inspired by real life.While many similarities have been condemned, there are some which have been appreciated as well. One of the peculiar characters from the film is Ankit Sagar, playing the character of Javed Khanani, of the Khanani brothers. Recently the actor talked about his experience of playing Javed and whether he knew who he really was. Karachi-based hawala titan Khanani was ISI’s money man, its shadow banker. If the terrorist organisation wanted to move money without raising any eyebrows, they went to him. He ran Khanani & Kalia International with his brother which spearheaded economic sabotage in India. He looked like an accountant, spoke like one too but his work was hardly that — its ambit included managing the money for terror organisations such as Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, as well as cleaning the cash for the dreaded D-Company. KKI was designated as a “significant transnational criminal organisation” by the US. He also spearheaded the fake currency notes flooding India, which were both sophisticated and nearly identical to Indian rupee. Some estimates say Rs 1,500–2,000 crore worth of Pakistan-origin fake notes were pumped into India in the early 2000s, and were used to fund Jihad.