शामत (अंकित तिवारी वर्ज़न)

Shaamat (Ankit Tiwari's Version) is the solo-male rendition of the duet-format Shaamat, the emotional centrepiece ballad of Mohit Suri's Ek Villain Returns (2022) soundtrack. Composed and sung by Ankit Tiwari — best known for his breakout 2013 hit Galliyan from the original Ek Villain — with lyrics by Prince Dubey, this version was released by T-Series on 15 August 2022 as a standalone lyrical video, following the original duet version (featuring Tara Sutaria, who made her singing debut on the track) released nine days earlier. Tiwari's return to the Ek Villain franchise carries symbolic weight: having composed and sung the sequel's tonal successor to Galliyan ('Galliyan Returns'), his additional solo take on Shaamat reinforces his role as the soundtrack's emotional anchor across both films.

Ankit Tiwari, composing and singing his own solo version, keeps Shaamat within the same slow-burning, piano-and-strings romantic-ballad register that defined his star-making Galliyan — a restrained, emotionally direct arrangement built to showcase his own voice rather than a picturized duet performance. Where the original duet paired his vocals with Tara Sutaria's debut singing turn, this solo cut strips the song back to a single emotional register, letting Tiwari's voice carry the full arc of the melody alone.

Prince Dubey's lyric opens on a note of self-aware regret — 'mana kiya maine phir bhi' (I forbade myself, yet still) — casting the title word 'shaamat' (ruin/misfortune) not as something inflicted by another, but as a consequence the singer walked into with open eyes. This framing of love as a self-chosen calamity, rather than an external tragedy, gives the song a more introspective, guilt-tinged register than a typical betrayal ballad.

The Shaamat duet was picturized in Ek Villain Returns' narrative around obsessive love and betrayal, with Tara Sutaria singing on-screen for the first time in her career alongside Ankit Tiwari. This standalone Ankit Tiwari solo version, released a week after the original duet (6 August 2022) and the film's 29 July theatrical debut, functioned as a promotional extension — giving Tiwari's fanbase and the soundtrack's streaming reach an additional, singer-focused cut of the same composition without the visual context of the film's romantic-thriller narrative.

While the original Shaamat duet became the soundtrack's biggest streaming hit — its official video crossing 150 million+ YouTube views, boosted in part by Tara Sutaria's singing debut — the standalone Ankit Tiwari solo version carved its own smaller but dedicated audience, drawing several million views on its own lyrical upload. Together, the two versions extended the shelf life of a single composition across multiple release moments, a now-common strategy in Hindi film soundtracks to maximise a song's reach across different singer fan-bases.