Mumbai is in the midst of a turf war between many gangs, collectively referred to as the Mumbai underworld when Satya (J.D Chakravarthy), a man without a past, comes to the city looking for employment. While waiting tables at the local dance bar, he gets involved in a scuffle with Jagga (Jeeva), bag man for dreaded don Guru Narayan (Raju Mavani). Jagga takes his revenge by getting Satya arrested on false charges of pimping. In jail, Satya clashes with yet another member of Mumbai's mafia, underworld don Bhiku Mhatre (Manoj Bajpai), who is in prison pending trial for the murder of a prominent film producer. Mhatre, pleased with Satya's bravado, extends a hand of friendship and arranges for his release as well as accommodation. With Mhatre's help, Satya avenges himself by gunning down Jagga in the very same dance bar and joins Mhatre's gang. Before branching out on his own, Mhatre was part of a gang that included himself, Guru Narayan, Kallu Mama (Saurabh Shukla) and lawyer Chandrakant Mule (Makrand Deshpande). Bhau Thakurdas Jhawle (Govind Namdeo), presently a corporator in the Mumbai Municipal Corporation, was the gang leader. After Jhawle joined politics, the gang split into two with Kallu and Mule joining Mhatre and Narayan going his own way. While the gangs had carved out their own territories which were off limits to the rival gang, both still maintained a relationship with Jhawle. Jagga's assassination breaks the uneasy truce and Narayan reneges on his promise by attacking Mhatre's gang when they are out on business. Mhatre decides to kill Narayan but is forced to abandon his project at the last moment on orders from Jhawle; the murder right on the eve of the municipal elections would have triggered a gang war and would be detrimental to Jhawle's political prospects. Meanwhile Satya, who has risen up the ranks and become a key decision-maker in the gang, has met and fallen in love with Vidya (Urmila Matondkar), an aspiring playback singer who lives next door, but has not informed her of his underworld connections. At one point he even threatens a music director and gets him to sign her up for a project, with Vidya being unaware of the entire episode. Satya tells Mhatre, fuming over Jhawle's orders to stay away from Narayan, to ignore him and they assassinate Narayan. Mhatre is now the unchallenged ruler of the underworld and Jhawle, knowing that he needs Mhatre's help to win the elections, patches up with him. This is when the city sees the appointment of a new police commissioner, Amodh Shukla (Paresh Rawal). Shukla and his force begin targeting Mhatre's gang through encounters. Satya, seeing the situation getting out of hand, convinces the gang that the commissioner has to be eliminated and gets him killed. The police respond by intensifying the crackdown. Jhawle wins the elections thanks to Mhatre's muscle power as well as public anger on the brutal methods adopted by the police in its fight against organized crime. In the midst of this, Satya and Vidya decide to catch a movie. Inspector Khandilkar (Aditya Shrivastava), on the basis of a tipoff that Satya is present in the cinema hall, surrounds the premises and orders that all doors be shut. Satya fires a gun, triggering a stampede which results in many fatalities, and escapes with Vidya. But the man who did not fear death now fears for Vidya's life. He decides to quit the underworld and reveals his decision to Mhatre, who decides to send them to Dubai where they would be safe. Jhawle holds a party to celebrate his victory and invites Mhatre, Mule and Kallu to attend the same. During the party, he shoots Mhatre dead for having disobeyed his order and sends Kallu along with Mule to kill Satya. Satya, unaware of Mhatre's death, runs off to Vidya and lies to her one last time, but has to flee when the police arrive. Khandilkar spills the beans in front of Vidya. Kallu returns to his headquarters, kills Mule instead of Satya, and informs Satya about Mhatre's fate. Satya takes his revenge by murdering Jhawle during Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations, but suffers a bullet wound in the process. Satya returns to Vidya's house to meet her but she refuses to open the door. He manages to break it open but Khandilkar, who has arrived to arrest him, shoots him multiple times. Satya collapses a few inches away from Vidya's feet, and breathes his last.

Analysis :

Every character in Satya was based on someone Varma had met or heard about; some belonged to the underworld, others didn't. "Everyone had a reference point. And the plot itself had multiple influences. One of them was a criminal Varma met in a court. The man was charged with multiple murders, but had found the time to fall in love with a lawyer when he was attending proceedings. The man told Varma how he committed his first murder. At the end of his encounter, Varma held on to three things: "it took him half an hour to brace himself before the killing, he had high fever for three days after he gunned down his first victim. And the fact that he is in love with somebody." These elements found their way into the film. In the film, Vidya does not know until the very end that Satya is a gangster. This aspect was inspired by the story of a man who used to live in the same building as one of Varma's friends. The man and the friend would sometimes bump into each other in the lift and exchange pleasantries. Later Varma came to know that the man had been arrested for a murder he had committed somewhere in Karnataka, and had been an absconder all this time. "[T]he thing about Bombay is that you may live for ten years as neighbor to somebody yet have no idea who he is," his friend had told him. The character of Bhiku Mhatre (named, according to Kashyap, after someone who served coffee) was conceived as "an anti-social element [who] lives by his own rules and [who] would not abide by the social rules and systems," a law unto himself. Even his questions would sound like statements because his "pride wouldn't allow him to make anyone feel that he doesn't know about something." The scene where Bhiku grieves over Chander's death by abusing him is based on a real-life incident Varma heard of. "A gangster lives on power" and Chander gets himself killed by not listening to Bhiku, thus taking away Bhiku's power to save him. "Grief [coming] out as anger. I took that as the soul [of] Bheeku Matre's character. Kallu Mama's character was based on an ex-gangster Varma met in a bar and whose behavior made him feel uneasy. But that feeling was absent the next time Varma met this person; he was very friendly. It was then that Varma realized that the man had created a false persona the first time around and "[had been] trying to play up to an image which he thought I had of him because he knew that I knew who he was." Kallu behaves in a similar manner in the film. He puts on a gangster act when a builder comes to see him temporarily hiding the fact that "he is a clown in the gang Chander's character was based on a man who "supposedly belong[ed] to Arun gowli’s gang." Varma had heard a lot about him but found out, on actually meeting him, that he was very sweet-natured and used Gawli's name in every sentence—"Gawli did this, Gawli did that, Gawli bought me a house." His world revolved around Gawli, and he didn't have an identity of his own. But it was Satya's character (who owes his name to a woman Varma knew in his college days that troubled Varma the most as he was "unclear" about Satya's nature. Was he someone who had a"criminal streak in his head" or was he a normal person who turned to crime? This lack of clarity persisted even after the shooting had been wrapped up and contributed to the inconsistent behviour of the character. "Satya slashes someone in cold blood in one scene and in another scene shyly smiles at Bheeku Matre after killing Jaggu and when Bheeku Matre is having a fight with his wife, like a zombie Satya stares at them. Why did he do that?" Varma asks and answers that he did those things because "I told him 'do it'." This was the reason the character was overshadowed by the others

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