Sometimes, the most frightening villains are not the ones written into a script, but the ones quietly accepted by society. As debate continues around Kartavya’s antagonist, the film’s director , Pulkit, insists audiences may be looking in the wrong direction altogether.

“Talk about the story and not just one person. There is some kind of chatter about him and I don’t know why. Saurabh [Dwivedi] has precisely three scenes in the film. I have not treated him as my villain or antagonist. The father is the villain of Kartavya and in a larger sense, it is society too is, and maybe we all are too. I have spoken about honour killing and the crimes that adults use children to commit — those are my villains. Society has fallen to such a level that we call children cancer. I cast Saurabh when he was hosting a show, because of the way he talks and delivered his podcast and I wanted that in my movie. If you want to hate someone I cannot stop you.”