Each cast member of Oni Sen’s Netflix India period war drama Operation Safed Sagar has been getting rave reviews from the audience, including Abhay Verma, who plays Flying Officer Rajpal Singh Dhaliwal aka Dhali in the show. Verma recently revealed that he is happy that viewers who streamed the Netflix series did not immediately recognise him as the actor from Munjya.
“Thankfully, people said, ‘Oh, is that the guy from Munjya?,” claimed Verma. The actor got his breakthrough in Bollywood with his lead performance as Bittu in Aditya Sarpotdar’s 2024 blockbuster horror comedy Munjya, which amassed over Rs 100 crore at the domestic box office. A part of the Maddock Horror Comedy Universe, it also starred Sharvari and Mona Singh among others.
“I believe you get what you seek. I was seeking different roles and characters, and I got them,” Abhay Verma told PTI. “I want to reinvent with every character. Now, people want to be surprised,” he added. Claiming that he “made a conscious choice to not get boxed as an actor”, he set the tone right at the start of his career when he made his debut playing Chaandi, a transgender, in Sandeep Singh’s 2023 ZEE5 film Safed.
Even though he was also very close to getting a part in Zoya Akhtar’s 2023 Netflix India coming-of-age period musical The Archies, Verma opted for Safed instead. It’s a choice that his Operation Safed Sagar co-star Siddharth, who plays Kargil War hero Ajay Ahuja in the series, also endorsed in a recent interview with Mashable.
Prior to Safed, Abhay Verma played a sleeper cell operative in season 2 of Raj & DK’s Amazon Prime Video spy thriller show The Family Man. Even his upcoming slate of films consists of a wide range of roles, from playing a role opposite Rasha Thadani in Laikey Laikaa to being a part of Siddharth Anand’s action crime drama King. The film, headlined by Shah Rukh Khan, is slated to release in cinemas this Christmas.
During the interview, Abhay Verma said his most recent project, Operation Safed Sagar, is a “dream come true”, given he always wanted to be a pilot since childhood. Calling his character of RS Dhaliwal a “legend”, he unfortunately couldn’t meet the real-life hero, who died in an air accident back in 2009. However, he shaped his performance on the basis of his interactions with Dhaliwal’s colleagues in the Indian Air Force.
“Dhaliwal sir was one of the best pilots that we had,” said Verma, adding, “When we were shooting at the air force stations, his courage, pride, and flamboyance that he carried was spoken about. So, I took a lot from that. I would be extremely proud of Operation Safed Sagar throughout my life, and the things that I got with it. I’m a better person now. After playing Dhaliwal sir, it makes me proud of the country that I live in.”
Operation Safed Sagar also stars Jimmy Shergill, Dia Mirza, Amrita Bagchi, Mihir Ahuja, Taaruk Raina, Arnav Bhasin, Adil Hussain, Manu Rishi Chadha, and Vinay Pathak, among others. Co-produced by Matchbox Shots and Feel Good Films, and co-written by Abhijeet Singh Parmar and ex-IAF officer Kushal Srivastava, it documents the lesser known contribution of IAF in India defeating Pakistan during the 1999 Kargil War.
