
One of his first television series was with Cinevistas (Sunil Mehta, Prem Kishen). Rakesh Roshan's Khudgarz got him back to Hindi cinema, in which negative roles in films like Tezaab and Khuda Gawah won him accolades as an antihero. Kumar saw his career suffer with the release of movies like Jangal Mein Mangal, among others. Kumar starred in Do Boond Pani in 1971 and went on to play the lead roles in several more movies.

He was known as "Deepak Dhar" in Film and Television Institute of India among his friends. National College in Bandra, Mumbai, and later joined the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune. He attended Daly College, a boarding school in Indore, enrolled at R.D.

Kiran comes from an aristocratic Kashmiri Pandit family his great-grandfather was a nobleman who governed the Gilgit Agency as its Wazir-e-Wazarat.
