Gajab Raat on Netflix: Bajpayee thriller out Oct 23

Manoj Bajpayee returns to streaming this week with a thriller that arrives under a different title than the one that first sparked controversy. Gajab Raat, backed by Neeraj Pandey’s Friday Film Works, drops on Netflix on October 23, 2026, and unfolds over a single night as a morally compromised police officer investigates the case of a young woman found badly injured after allegedly being pushed from a moving car in Delhi.

The essential details

• Film: Gajab Raat
• Release: October 23, 2026, on Netflix
• Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Nushrratt Bharuccha, Saqib Saleem, Akshay Oberoi, Divya Dutta, Kiku Sharda, Shraddha Das
• Director: Ritesh Shah, making his directorial debut
• Backing: Neeraj Pandey’s Friday Film Works

A title change after backlash

The film was originally announced as Ghooskhor Pandat. That name, combining the Hindi word for bribe-taker with a community title, triggered sharp reactions from Brahmin communities, legal notices and an FIR in Uttar Pradesh that accused the makers of hurting religious sentiments and defaming a specific caste. Protesters argued the title linked a community identity to corruption.

Manoj Bajpayee and the team maintained that the phrase referred only to a police officer’s departmental nickname, not to any community. Still, to settle the matter and respect public sentiment, the producers dropped the original title and removed the first set of promotional materials. The film now lands as Gajab Raat.

Why this one matters

This is Bajpayee and Pandey’s first collaboration since the 2018 spy thriller Aiyaary, and it hands the director’s chair to Ritesh Shah, a screenwriter stepping behind the camera for the first time. The single-night structure gives the story a ticking-clock pressure: the officer is caught between personal gain and doing the right thing, and the investigation pulls in everyone around him.

Bajpayee told Netflix’s Tudum: “I have always been drawn to characters who are not easy to define, and this film gave me the opportunity to inhabit a world filled with suspense, moral dilemmas and questions of accountability.”

Shah, for his part, said to Tudum: “I’ve always loved thrillers that pull you into a situation and keep you guessing what happens next, and that was the starting point for Gajab Raat.”

For fans, the draw is threefold: a riveting actor in a messy, morally foggy role; a filmmaker known for tight suspense in the producer’s chair; and a new director who has written enough screenplays to understand how to stretch one night into a feature-length question about loyalty.

What to expect from the night

Details of the plot are deliberately thin, which is itself a signal: the film wants the audience to piece together motivations as the characters do. That slow reveal, plus the confined timeline, should reward viewers who enjoy thrillers built on conversation and consequence rather than large action set pieces.

If the title controversy lingers in your mind, it is part of the film’s context now. The makers chose to change course, erase the earlier campaign and let the story do the talking under a safer name. Whether that choice helps or hurts the film’s discovery on Netflix will be clear soon after October 23.

Source: The Times of India