Star Life, a general entertainment home to various Bollywood entertainment from StarPlus like Anupama and Not Without My Family and second English dubbed channel in Africa has picked up rights to supernatural horror, Night Of Doom (Qayamat Ki Raat) as teased last year.
The series was produced by Twist Of Fate's very own Ekta Kapoor and features Karishma Tanna, Vivek Dahiya, Nirbhay Wadhwa, Saurish Singh Athwal and Madhurima Tuli. It will be the first supernatural series in a long while as the last one A Magical Love Story was launched in mid 2021.
Set in the year of 1993, the story begins with a newly wedded couple, Suhasini and Mahendar going to a Ram temple at Ramnamgarh to hand over Suhasini's wedding chain to the idol of Lord Rama and receive the deity's blessings. The train stops at the station and Mahendar's loyal driver Birju comes to fetch them and to drive them till the temple. Not realising that Birju is possessed, they follow him. Suhasini and Mahendar enter the temple when suddenly, Mahendar recalls that they have forgotten the wedding chain in the car so Mahendar goes to fetch it, asking Suhasini to stay here. Meanwhile, Suhasini witnesses strange eerie occurrences in the temple premises while exploring the region which includes absence of a bell as well as any idol of Lord Rama inside the temple and passing of a cat out of nowhere. She trips off a door and falls down the stairs that lead into the temple's basement that happens to be a Tantrik named Kalasur's lair. As soon as Kalasur sees her, he gladly welcomes her inside and offers to spend the night with her and make love. This frightens Suhasini and she yells for help. This is followed by a struggle by Suhasini to escape the Tantrik's clutches and a duel between him and her husband Mahendar. Suhasini runs away screaming for help. While fighting with the Tantrik, Mahendar loses consciousness and Kalasur shape-shifts into Mahendar's form.
Meanwhile, Suhasini reaches the palace of Thakur Prithvi Singh Suryavanshi and asks them to save her husband from Kalasur. Just then, Kalasur arrives there in Mahendar's disguise and Suhasini, scared out of her wits, pleads everybody to get the Tantrik at the temple arrested. As everyone goes in search of the Tantrik, Kalasur takes Suhasini in a bedroom inside the palace and tries making love to her. But luckily Suhasini sees the reflection of the Tantrik in the glass ceiling and pushes him away. As she reaches for the door to exit the house, the Thakur's family returns with the real Mahendar, a priest and few village men because they had found an unconscious Mahendar at the temple instead of the Tantrik. The priest traps Kalasur inside a circular ring of holy ash on the floor. The Tantrik still doesn't accept defeat. He keeps insisting on making love to Suhasini which irks Mahendar to no extent. He threatens to burn Kalasur into ashes, but the latter remarks that his ashes would rise in air and coalesce to resurrect him. Next, Mahendar threatens to bury the Tantrik alive, but he says that his skeleton would rise from underneath the ground to revive him. Mahendar then strangles Kalasur and chokes him, but Kalasur manages to get an upper hand and lifts Mahendar up in the air grabbing his throat. Suhasini requests Kalasur to leave Mahendar unharmed but he pays no heed and insists on having a one-night stand with her. This invokes the ferocity and strength inside Suhasini who lifts up a villager's axe and chops off Kalasur's right arm that had grabbed Mahendar's throat. Next, she cuts the Tantrik's head off. As a result, the beheaded Tantrik curses Suhasini's family that since he couldn't make love to Suhasini, no woman from her family must consummate her marriage hereafter or else death would befall on her. He also remarks that Suhasini would never know the reason why he had chosen her and wanted to make love to her. The priest then orders Lakha, a villager to lock the Tantrik's arm, head and body separately and hide them in different places so that the Tantrik can never assimilate his body parts together and resurrect himself.
Night Of Doom premiered on StarPlus in 2018 and was met with positive reception for its gripping storyline, use of the cast members and ability to balance between good and evil. It managed to pull 5.8 million viewers in its opening week in India.
Night Of Doom airs 23 August at 22:00 replacing Never Say Goodbye with a rerun of Made For Each Other expected to replace Geet. Pandya Store was originally scheduled to replace the Never Say Goodbye but was pulled out.
