The episode begins with a shot of Himmat’s car riddled with bullets. Fortunately, Himmat ducks when the bullets are fired. He is alive but with a few bruises. He informs RAW about this attack and orders them to trace the car with the terrorist. He also gets some of his agents to stand guard at his home.

Back in Dubai, Farooq is at Ismail Hasan’s brother, Abu's funeral. Ismail is crying and Farooq is trying to console him. Ismail says that he knows his brother would never try to steal money from Hafiz Ali. Farooq in turn tries to manipulate him and informs him that Hafiz Ali has been too cruel with his punishment. When Ismail asks him if his brother had been in touch with him, Farooq tells him that he hasn’t had contact with Abu in weeks. Ismail’s friend, Hamid, becomes suspicious of Farooq.

Back at the RAW HQ in Delhi, Himmat runs a test on Bala and Avinash, his foreign agents, to see if they are ready for active duty and operations. Both the agents fight off paid mercenaries that he had sent and Himmat is convinced. Back at his house, his wife gets worried when she is informed about the attack on his life.

Dubai

We see Hafiz Ali receive photographs of Himmat and his family.

We now see Chaddha from the audit inquiry committee meet the high profile politician who had asked Abbas to do a background check on Himmat. She informs Chaddha that her name is going to come up in the inquiry. She tells him about a monetary commission that her son had with some people in Moscow for a project a few years back. Chaddha is told that Himmat had learned about this deal and had tried to investigate it, but nothing came up. She informs Chaddha that her son had done nothing illegal or corrupt but she wants to make sure this topic never comes up during the inquiry.

We see Himmat at Red Fort Annexe for his audit inquiry. Before entering the meeting, Himmat gives orders for a blast on a specific location in Pakistan. Chaddha and Banerjee are going over the files and inquiring about Himmat's expense of Rs 1 crore during the days of demonetisation.

Dubai,

8 November 2016, The day of demonetisation announcement.

Farooq gets a call from Ismail that Hafiz needs to supply new 1 crore Rupee notes into Kashmir. Farooq tells him that he can arrange it thinking that this deal will finally get him close to Hafiz Ali and later to Ikhlaq Khan. Himmat gets 1 crore worth of new notes transferred to Hafiz Ali’s account but unfortunately Farooq never gets an opportunity to meet Hafiz.

When Banerjee asks Himmat about an income of 85 Lakhs right after this operation, Himmat tells him that he tracked the money to Kashmir.  In a joint operation with Indian Army, they managed to recover 85 Lakh out of the 1 Crore transferred.

The committee asks him about a recent expense of Rs 7 Lakh and Himmat informs him about the bomb blast he had planned in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Chaddha and Banerjee are flummoxed. Suddenly everyone's phones start ringing. Himmat asks them to turn on the TV. The breaking news is that the Jaish-e-Mohammed leader has been kicked out from the political election for the initiating blasts in Rawalpindi. Himmat explains to the committee that after Article 370 was revoked, Jamaat had become very active. He wanted to create a panic situation in the Jamaat through the bomb blasts after which Ikhlaq Khan would have to retaliate against India and in the process be forced to come out of hiding.

Murdike, Pakistan
An ISI official meets Noor Sahab, the leader of the Jamaat. Noor tells him that he has not initiated the blasts and that he doesn’t need help from Islamabad anymore. We learn that the Pakistani government has frozen his bank accounts and assets.

Hafiz gets a call from Noor in Dubai. He is asked to connect with Ikhlaq Khan.

Farooq gets calls from Abu Hasan’s number. Ismail Hasan’s friend, Hamid is on the other end of the line. Hamid hints that he knows about Farooq's conspiracy against Hafiz in which Abu was wrongfully blamed.

The start of this episode was pretty slow. We see agents in different parts of the world prove themselves by passing Himmat’s test. These scenes were boring and unnecessary with too much information about the personal lives of the agents which added nothing to the story. Fortunately as the audit inquiry starts the show picks up pace and with Himmat’s flashbacks we learn interesting details of Farooq’s operation in Dubai.

I like how demonetisation and other real events are used in this show. They make the Special OPS look authentic and not like other fictionalised spy dramas.

All this time I was beginning to think that Hafiz Ali was actually Ikhlaq Khan but Special OPS is never predictable. It is interesting how we haven't seen the face of the main antagonist even after 4 episodes. Or have we?

Rating 5/5