Plot

A police officer adopts the son and sole survivor of a family he has massacred while pursuing a terrorist. After some time the foster son finds out what the stepfather did.

In a valley of astonishing beauty, a small family lives in an idyllic house: a father, a mother and a son. They are a picture of happiness and love. But appearances are often deceptive. This pastoral landscape is the strife-torn valley of Kashmir, and the son, Altaaf, is an orphan of war who has been adopted by a policeman, Inayat Khan, and his wife, Neelima. Altaaf is slowly recovering from the psychic wounds of seeing his parents and his young sister shot to death before his eyes by a masked man. Years later, a rebel force infiltrates the valley on a secret mission. They need an highly trained fighter with burning anger and find that in Altaaf. He returns to the streets and by lanes of his childhood fighting for Hilal Kohistani, but also obsessed with his own private mission: he must kill the masked intruder who haunts his nightmares -- Inayat Khan.—gavin@sunny_deol2009@yahoo.com

In grief stricken Kashmir Superintendent Inayat Khan looses his son when Doctors decide not to treat him due to fatwa issued against police officers by a terrorist leader.Inayat Khan out of frustration attacks a house where terrorist are hiding but in cross firing kills a innocent family and the only surviving member is 10 year old Altaf.Inayat and his wife Neelima adopt Altaf but he finds that Inayat was responsible for killing his family and plans to kill him but is overpowered by Inayat and runs away from the house and years later is seen in the terrorist organization run by Hilal Kohistani whose aim is to destroy Kashmir and uses Altaf as his trump card as security of Kashmir is under Inayat Khan.—alex.mjacko@gmail.com

Set in the turmoil of the disputed Kashmir Valley between 1989 and 1999, the mission actually starts after a series of life-altering events. Sanjay Dutt plays an Indian Muslim police officer, who in the line of duty, accidentally kills a Muslim Kashmiri family. The sole survivor of the clan is the young Altaaf (Hrithik Roshan). The police officer adopts him at his wife's insistence since they both just lost their own son in an accident. When the traumatized boy finds out that the masked man in his nightmares who murdered his familiy is his new stepfather, he flees, swearing revenge. Several years later he has become a grown up deadly fighting machine and time for revenge has come...—Gonz30

Malik Ul Khan has issued a fatwa (holy order) instructing all Kashmiri residents that they are not to provide any support of any kind of SSP Inayat Khan and his soldiers. When Inayat's son is injured in a domestic accident, a doctor breaks the rules, but is unable to save Irfan. The doctor and all of his family are brutally and mercilessly hunted down and killed by terrorists. When Inayat entraps Malik, there is a shoot-out, and as a result, Malik and several other innocent by-standers are killed. One of the survivors is young Altaaf, who watched his entire family being killed by a masked Indian soldier. Inayat takes this child to live with him and his Hindu wife, Neelima. Years later, Altaaf has grown up calling Neelima and Inayat "Ammi and Abba"., and has found out that the masked soldier was none other than Inayat himself. Altaaf breaks off his relationship and re-locates to Kashmir and joins with a group of terrorist who want an independent Kashmir. When the Indian Prime Minister decides to visit the region, Altaaf and his group are ready to carry out their deadly strike and destabilize the region and country. When Inayat attempts to take this assignment, his superiors refuse to accede to his request. It is then that Inayat finds out that the target of the terrorists is not the Indian Prime Minister, but two places of worship - Hindu and Islamic - and that the agenda of the terrorists is to shoot a missile at each of these holy places, so that the Hindus would blame the Muslims and vice versa, thus leading to riots and virtually unstoppable bloodshed.—rAjOo (gunwanti@hotmail.com)

Inayat Khan (Sanjay Dutt) is the Senior Superintendent of Police responsible for the security of Srinagar, Kashmir. One day, his young son Irfaan (Yogin Soni) suffers an accident and is taken to a hospital. Unfortunately, due to a fatwa instigated by the leader of a terrorist group forbidding doctors to treat policemen, as one doctor named Aktar, his wife, and daughter fell victim to the terrorist group after treating Khan, the doctors refused to treat Irfaan. Khan angrily swears to kill the doctors if they don't treat his son, but they still refused, saying they are willing to die to ensure their families' safety from the terrorist group. As a result, Irfaan dies, and Khan swears to put an end to the threat of the terrorist group in revenge for his son's death.

After finding out that the group of terrorists is taking refuge in the village of Dalgate, Khan and his men manage to attack and kill the criminals. Unfortunately, a family is caught in the crossfire, and they are killed as well. A young boy named Altaaf is the only family member who survives the shooting. He is severely traumatized by seeing his parents and sister die before his eyes and is haunted by the memory of the masked face of one of the police officers who shot at his family: that police officer is Khan.

Altaaf falls unconscious and is jailed by Khan's men, much to Khan's anger, who then berates his officers for placing an orphaned boy in a cell just because his family offered shelter to the terrorists. Khan's wife Neelima (Sonali Kulkarni), having just lost Irfaan and feeling sorry for Altaaf, attempts to persuade Khan to let them adopt the boy. Khan, despite his fear that Altaaf may one day discover the truth and get revenge for it, reluctantly agrees, feeling extremely remorseful for killing Altaaf's family.

Just when Altaaf seemed to have settled down in his new home and accepted Khan and Neelima as his new parents, he finds Khan's mask and realizes that Khan was one of the police who killed his family. After an unsuccessful attempt on Khan's life, the angry Altaaf runs away and is found and brought up by a terrorist group led by their Pathan leader Hilal Kohistani (Jackie Shroff), who brainwashes him into thinking that he and his men act according to Islamic principles and trains him to become a terrorist.

Ten years later, Hilal and an adult Altaaf (Hrithik Roshan) are assigned the task of completing "Mission Kashmir," a plan of an unnamed terrorist sponsor that involves - or so Altaaf is told - killing the Indian prime minister. Hilal uses Altaaf's hatred as a means to achieve his own goals, all the while encouraging Altaaf to target Khan (who is now an Inspector General) in revenge of his family's death. Altaaf visits his childhood friend and TV personality Sufiya Parvez (Preity Zinta) and, though he falls in love with her and helps at her concerts, he still uses her to try and make Hilal's side plans (which is to blow up the TV tower of Srinagar on Khan's birthday) successful. He makes another unsuccessful attempt on Khan's life, and, in the process, Khan recognizes him and begins trying to track him down, much to Neelima's discomfort, resulting a fallout between Khan and Neelima.

At the same time, Sufiya learns of Altaaf's occupation as a militant, and breaks off her relationship with him, feeling somewhat betrayed, despite knowing that his family tragedy has caused him to go that way. On the same date Altaaf's family was murdered, Altaaf makes another attempt on Khan by having three of Hilal's men to plant a bomb on Khan's briefcase. Unfortunately, this time, Neelima falls victim to it, much to the distraught of both Khan and Altaaf, with the former being unable to apologize for his argument with her and the latter screaming in remorseful agony for killing her.

Eventually, Khan manages to invade one of Hilal's men's hideouts and discovers evidence and information about Mission Kashmir after catching the men who planted the briefcase bomb. After going through some cassette tapes with the help from Sufiya, he realizes that Mission Kashmir has nothing to do with taking down the Prime Minister at all: instead, the true goal of Mission Kashmir is to launch missiles on the local Muslim Mosque and the local Hindu temple to escalate Hindu-Muslim conflict across the subcontinent, thereby dividing Kashmir and turning it into a war zone. It also turns out that the attack on the TV tower was planned to spread the rumor of murdering the Prime Minister to cover up the terrorists' true goal.

Hilal deliberately does not tell Altaaf what Mission Kashmir really is, knowing that Altaaf would not support it and would try to stop it; this was evident of when Altaaf leaves to the swampy hideouts to prepare for the launches, Hilal secretly tells one of his men to keep an eye on Altaaf, ordering his death if he doesn't consent over what the true targets will be. Through staging a fire in the jail that allowed one of the bomb-briefcase men to escape, Khan and his men managed to track down and capture Hilal, but they are distraught to hear that Altaaf and the other terrorists have left for to launch the missiles, something which neither the police nor the army can take action, as they still don't have any idea or time to find out where the missiles will be launched.

Deciding to play wise on this, Khan offers to make a deal with Hilal: going under the false pretense of allowing Hilal and his men to continue forward with Mission Kashmir in exchange for Altaaf, whom Khan swore to kill. He secretly lies to Hilal that he is more occupied with revenge for Neelima's death rather than doing his job of serving his country. Seeing that Khan's 'hatred' of Altaaf is worthy of a Pathan's duty, Hilal accepts the deal, and to ensure no other mistake will be made, Khan goes alone with Hilal to the missile hideouts.

As Hilal and Khan reached the swamps, Hilal tells Altaaf of Khan's whereabouts. At that point, an enraged, hate-filled Altaaf starts attacking a weary Khan to exact his revenge for his family's demise. While doing so, Khan reveals to him the true goals of Mission Kashmir, stating that Kashmir will be turned into a hell if the Hindu-Muslim conflicts arise by the missiles. Having had enough of listening to him, Altaaf attempts to shoot Khan in the head. Khan, expressing his dear love for Altaaf and his sorrowful regret for killing his family, is willing to accept his fate, but begs Altaaf to stop Hilal and his plans. As Altaaf struggles to do it, he then remembers that he once knew about the shrines Neelima took him to and the comment Neelima said about choosing sides during her visit earlier.

Unwilling to betray his mother, Altaaf decides to put his plan of revenge aside and aids Khan into stopping Hilal and his men from targeting the holy shrines. Just as things are about to end, Hilal throws a bomb to distract them before getting shot to death by Altaaf, giving Hilal's men a chance to prepare to blow up the shrines, much to Altaaf's shock. While Khan fights back by shooting several terrorists to death, Altaaf redeems himself by taking possession of a missile launcher and using it to destroy the other launchers and kill the remaining terrorists, thus saving the shrines. Eventually, Altaaf gets shot in the torso, and he falls into the swamps. Khan then jumps in and safely takes the unconscious Altaaf back to dry land, evading the explosion of the hideouts caused by Altaaf's act of redemption.

The plans of Mission Kashmir are revealed to the public by the media, and the terrorist sponsor's hideout is found by Kashmiri police, who shoot the sponsor off-screen as he tries to get away after killing two of his associates. Altaaf ends up having a nice dream based one of his pictures he drew as a child before waking up in Khan's house, where he reconciles with Sufiya and forgives Khan, accepting him as his father again after 10 years.