Some 300 years ago, the brother of the late king Rana Ranjit Singh had attempted to molest a beautiful girl in the palace.

However, a persistent Aman looks up some of the professor's work and retrieves (in a dangerous chase with an evil spirit) a "cursed" book from the library.

Aided by the curator of the 300-year-old Magha jail, the professor performs a seance to invoke the spirit of Ranjit Singh, and it is revealed that Rani Mohini was never satisfied with her station as the second wife of Raja Gajsingh.

Ranjit Singh ascended the throne, and, upon learning of Rani Mohini's dark powers, promptly arranged to execute her.

Upon her execution, her soul became the keeper of the curse (by Acharya Sachidanand) and would forever torment Ranjit Singh's family.

They connect the clues from the amulet and from Ranjit Singh and deduce that the spirit of Mohini can be dispatched to the nether world only when her mortal remains (ashes) are dissolved.

They retrieve the pot containing her ashes but Mohini's spirit brutally kills the professor and chases them to foil their efforts.

"[4] The Indian Express gave the film one star out of five and Shubhra Gupta wrote: "Practically nothing about `Shaapit', which has the youngest looking debutant hero after Shahid Kapoor, is scary : not the bag of skeletons which floats around a 300 year old castle, not the wailing and the screeching, and the moaning and the groaning.

"[5] Mid-Day considered: "The basic plot of the film seems lost somewhere the curse and the evil spirit are supposed to have a connection but that remains unexplained.

It's almost like two separate tracks in the same film and that makes it hard to comprehend" and commented "The director's scare tactics work big time in the first half the sequence with Aman alone in the library is the most thrilling of the lot.

[6] Taran Adarsh writing for Bollywood Hungama commented: "With SHAAPIT, Vikram Bhatt raises the bar for horror films made in India.