The film was Aamir Khan's first movie after QSQT and wasn't accepted well by the audience at the time, however it received much critical acclaim and subsequently three National Film Awards in 1989 and developed considerable following over the years. The film also marked the Bollywood debut of ace cinematographer Santosh Sivan, and film editor A. Sreekar Prasad.
This is the second film of Aamir Khan in which Supriya Pathak was Aamir's heroine, and this film was made by Basu Bhattacharya's son. This film had no buyers till Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988) became a hit.
Aamir Khan was shooting his debut film, QSQT at the same time as this. However, since this was a very low budget film, he refused to being paid and even used some of own cash to promote the film.
Most of the shooting occurred in the evening while the script was being written during the day by Aditya Bhattacharya and Nusrat Khan, Aamir Khan's sister.
The original length of the film after the soundmix was over 3 hours. The issue of the length was with the distributors who came to knowing that the film was a dark film and that too being so long, they only agreed to distribute the film if only it was trimmed which eventually made the film's length just under 2 hours