indian cinema heritage foundation

Preetam (1971)

  • LanguageHindi
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Little did Thakur know that he had married away his younger sister Rukmini to jail-bird. Rana, a criminal at large, left Rukmini heavily with a child when the police grabbed him.

Rukmini breathed her last after the delivery, but not before taking an oath from Thakur that he would never reveal the identity of her child to Rana. Thakur fulfilled her last wish by bringing up Preetam as his own child. Later, Thakur's wife gave birth to a son and thus Preetam and Anil grew up as real brothers. Rana escaped from jail and came to claim his wife and child. Thakur not only lied to him that Rukmini had given birth to a still-born child before she died, but he also got Rana rearrested. Rana swore vengeance. Years later when he was finally released from jail and Preetam and Anil had grown up as eligible bachelors, Rana planted a throughly unscrupulous Sarita into Thakur's house to trap Anil into matrimony and ruin the entire Thakur family from within.

this nefarious design was upset when, on the eve of his marriage, Anil met with a fatal accident. Sarita and Rana then hatched another plot. Sarita feigned that she was carrying Anil's child out of wedlock. Preetam, in order to save his own beloved Sharan, whom he was to marry and instead, took the seven circles round the sacred fire with Sarita.

But before Sarita could finish her dirty job of ruining the Thakur family, she was herself done to death. Who gave her short shrift? Whose masterly hand was it that threw a spanner in Rana's unfailing scheme? The unfolding of this mystery forms the climax of this drama that is bound to leave you spellbound.

(From the official press booklet)