Mehul Kumar, the director who rocketed Nana Patekar to stardom with author-backed roles in Krantiveer and Tirangaa and imparted momentum to yesteryear actor Raj Kumar's career in the late 80's with Marte Dum Tak and Jungbaaz is back to his forte of hard-hitting film with Jaago (after his last love story Kitne Door Kitne Paas)

Jaago deals with the serious issue of child rape, something never attempted before on the Indian screen. The film has been woven around an incident of child rape with many heart-touching incidents.

Shruti (child artist Hansika Motwani) is the 10-year old daughter of Shrikant (Sanjay Kapoor) and Shraddha (Raveena Tandon). She goes daily from Borivali to Bandra by local train to attend school. One day, she accidentally gets locked up in school and by the time she catches a train to go home, it is already midnight. Three young drug addicts also board the train and seeing her alone, they rape her in front of three passengers who are too afraid to help her.

Shruti is brought in an unconscious state to the hospital by the Police. She breathes her last in front of her aggrieved parents. The whole city is shocked by this incident. The case is handed over to Kripa Shankar Thakur (Manoj Bajpai) - an upright and honest cop from the Crime Branch. From here starts an unusual legal battle between the honest and the corrupt. Kripa Shankar, without crossing the legal line, arrests all the three offenders. He bares open the naked truth about the society and the legal system. Finally the Honorable judge gives a judgement that makes history.

What is this judgement? What sentence should he give to a child rapist? How should the courts deal rape cases? The answer to all these questions are in Jaago. It's not a film, it's a truth. It's an awakening!

The film also stars Akhilendra Mishra and Puru Raajkumar (in sp. appearance). The story, screenplay and dialogues of the film are written by K.K.Singh, who also penned the trenchant dialogues of Krantiveer and directed the Salman Khan starrer "Veergati". The hard-hitting film is completely devoid of a song and dance track while the background score is composed by Sameer Sen.

The film is slated to release on February 6, 2004.