Spoilers ahead for Andhadhun.
Short answer: The ending is deliberately ambiguous — but the film’s very last shot plants a clue. As “blind” pianist Akash walks away, he flicks a stray can off his path with his cane. That tiny movement strongly implies he can see, suggesting his blindness has become a performance he’s chosen to keep up. Whether the rest of his story is even true is the bigger question Sriram Raghavan leaves hanging.
A quick recap of where we end up
Andhadhun (2018), directed by Sriram Raghavan, stars Ayushmann Khurrana as Akash, a pianist who pretends to be blind to sharpen his art (and get some perks), and Tabu as Simi, a woman who becomes lethally dangerous after Akash accidentally witnesses the aftermath of a murder. The plot spirals through blackmail, a crooked doctor harvesting organs, kidnapping, and a booze-soaked chain of double-crosses.
By the finale, the story has jumped forward and moved to Europe, where Akash — apparently blind, walking with a rabbit-headed cane — recounts everything to his old flame Sophie. He tells her a version of events in which Simi got her comeuppance and he refused an offer to restore his sight using her corneas.
The two ways to read the ending
Reading 1: He’s telling the truth and is genuinely blind
In Akash’s account, he’s the wronged innocent who took the moral high ground and turned down the transplant that could have cured him. If you take him at his word, he’s a blind artist who survived a nightmare and walked away clean.
Reading 2: He’s lying, and he can see
The film pointedly undercuts his story. The clincher is the final shot: Akash, still using his cane, effortlessly flicks a discarded can out of his way — something a truly blind man couldn’t do. Raghavan plants this beat on purpose. It suggests Akash did get his sight back (very possibly by taking Simi’s corneas, exactly the deal he claims he rejected) and is now simply performing blindness as a lifelong con. The polished, self-flattering version he tells Sophie may be pure fiction. It’s the kind of unreliable-narrator gut-punch that fans of twisty thrillers like Farzi will recognise instantly.
What’s the deal with the rabbit cane?
The rabbit motif runs through the film and ties back to Sophie (and an earlier “blind rabbit” beat). By the end, the rabbit-headed cane works as a wink from the filmmakers: it’s a prop that sells Akash’s blindness to the world — and to us. The cane is a symbol of the performance, which is exactly why the can-kick lands as such a sly gotcha.
So did Akash regain his sight?
The film never states it outright, and that ambiguity is the point — but the weight of evidence (the can-kick, the too-neat story, the earlier setup about the transplant) tilts heavily toward “yes, he can see, and he’s lying.” Raghavan has spoken about wanting the audience to leave the cinema arguing, and Andhadhun is engineered so that the “innocent blind artist” version and the “cunning con man” version are both technically supportable. Most viewers come down on the con-man side.
Is Andhadhun based on a true story?
No. Andhadhun isn’t a true story — it was inspired by the French short film L’Accordeur (The Piano Tuner), which shares the premise of a pianist faking blindness who stumbles into a crime. Raghavan expanded that seed into a feature-length, twist-heavy thriller with its own characters and mythology.
More from Quack Review: get lost in the mind-bending mystery of Netflix’s Dark, plus more twists in our Bollywood section.
