Majboor (1974 film)

Ravi Khanna (Amitabh Bachchan) is a middle-class travel agent living happily with his widowed mother (Sulochana Latkar), wheelchair-bound sister Renu (Farida Jalal) and young brother Billu (Alankar Joshi), and is also in a relationship with the wealthy Neela Rajvansh (Parveen Babi). One rainy night, he deals with a wealthy client named Surendra Sinha (Rehman) and accepts a lift in his car since there are no taxis around. Afterwards, Surendra is mysteriously abducted and shockingly found dead in a gutter, and police investigations for the murder lead two murder investigators - CID Inspector Khurana (Iftekhar) and Inspector Kulkarni (Jagdish Raj) - to the doors of Ravi's office to interrogate him about his meeting with Surendra. Their keen interest in Ravi makes him nervous as he is the last known person to have seen Surendra.

Around the same time, Ravi's life is turned upside-down when his regular attacks of headache, seemingly triggered by stress, is diagnosed as the terminal illness of brain tumour, which needs to be extracted immediately through a brain surgery. However, his examiner Dr. Shah (Sajjan) unintentionally scares Ravi with the range of possible outcomes of either paralysis or blindness or mental disorder. This shocking revelation puts Ravi in a dilemma and therefore, he hesitates to declare his decision to Dr. Shah, since he is deeply concerned about his family and Neela's future.

While aware of the fact that his brain tumour is set to consume him in six months, Ravi learns from the daily newspaper that Surendra's younger brother Narendra Sinha (Satyen Kappu) has announced a reward of ₹500,000 for the capture of Surendra's killer. This news provokes Ravi to come up with a scheming plan in hopes of bettering his family's financial conditions. As per the plan, he anonymously contacts Khurana in the police station and names "himself" in tip as Surendra's murderer. Also, Ravi instructs the police to deliver the reward money to the office of his solicitor named Advocate Rane (Shiv Kumar), who is his close friend and a lawyer. On the other hand, Ravi sends an anonymous letter to Rane's office, which reads that he should deduct his fees and hand over the amount of money to Ravi's own mother.

With the help of the unreal evidences established by Ravi and fingerprinting, Khurana and Kulkarni become sure of his deception, resume their pursuit and arrest him. During the trial, Ravi makes a fake confession of having abducted Surendra and killed him with an iron rod (which is also a part of the unreal evidences). On the basis of reasonable doubt, the court announces a verdict of death sentence to Ravi under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, much to his family and Neela's consternation. In a last hope of changing the family's fate, Ravi's mother visits Narendra and appeals for mercy before him, begging him to change Ravi's punishment into life imprisonment. Nevertheless, Narendra stands firm with his determination about Ravi's imminent fate at the tragic loss of his brother.

Despite this, things take a turn when Ravi's yet another attack of headache in prison lands him up at the hospital under police custody. While there, he fortunately undergoes a successful brain surgery with no side-effects for being rushed in on time by Khurana and Kulkarni, much to Dr. Shah's happiness. However, it is too late now since Ravi is already a convicted criminal of abduction, ransom and murder. Well aware of having condemned himself to be hung for a murder that he did not commit, Ravi reveals his suicidal conspiracy to Neela and Rane during a permitted meeting with them at the hospital, and they explain to him that the only way out to escape the consequences of his ill-advised actions is to find the real culprit of the crime.

Seeing no other way out, Ravi escapes from the hospital using some clever tricks and reunites with Neela, therefore leaving in search of Surendra's real murderer with her. During his mission, Ravi investigates a significant ring that could lead him back to the killer, and after interrogations from a one-time accquaintance named Mahipat Rai (Madan Puri) to a black market dealer named Prakash (Mac Mohan), Ravi comes across a kind-hearted and happy-go-lucky professional thief named Michael D'Souza (Pran). After learning of Ravi's plight, Michael pledges to help him nab the real culprit since he had robbed the same ring from the driver of a car on a rainy night, unmindful of the fact that it belonged to the dead Surendra at the backseat. After all, Ravi is double-crossed by Michael as Prakash influences him to sell out Ravi to Narendra in exchange of the reward money. Thus, Michael ends up at the late Surendra's house where, in a twisted climax, he runs into Narendra and recalls him to be the driver of the car, whom he had robbed Surendra's costly ring from.

After a brief confrontation, Narendra admits that Surendra's wife Mona (Ashoo) was having an extramarital affair with him and that as Surendra walked in on them and saw them together, he killed the latter with the infliction of head injuries and threw his body off in the gutter, faking the latter's abduction in order to cover up his crime. Upon learning this, Michael sets up the meeting point of an abandoned, ramshackle wooden house on the Kasara Ghat with Narendra, where he will hand over Ravi to him in exchange of the reward money. The next day, Michael visits Ravi's house in order to find out his reason for framing himself for the murder. While there, he has a change of heart on seeing Renu emotionally lamenting their unfortunate separation from Ravi and mercifully promises her that he will bring their smiles back. Meanwhile, Narendra secretly carries his revolver gun to the meeting point, fearing that Michael might expose his crime. Right as Ravi and Neela arrive at the scene, Narendra's conspiracy is exposed before them due to the three gunshots inflicted by him upon Michael.

Keeping the promise he had made to Renu, a gravely injured Michael turns the tables on Narendra and confesses about his crime to Ravi. On this development, Ravi is forced to leave from the scene to bring some help for Michael, who holds Narendra at gunpoint in a gravely injured state while being taken care of by Neela. Whilst returning with a physician, Ravi also leads Kulkarni and the police to the place on time where the dying Michael confesses about Ravi's innocence and Narendra's conspiracies. As a result, Narendra is arrested and sent to prison for his crimes, while all charges against Ravi are dropped. In the end, Michael expresses his wishes of happiness for Ravi's family before Ravi and dies succumbing to his serious injuries, having fulfilled his promise.

• Amitabh Bachchan as Ravi Khanna
• Parveen Babi as Neela Rajvansh
• Pran as Michael D'Souza
• Satyen Kappu as Narendra Sinha
• Iftekhar as CID Inspector Khurana
• Jagdish Raj as Inspector Kulkarni
• Farida Jalal as Renu Khanna (Ravi's sister)
• Sulochana Latkar as Mrs. Khanna (Ravi's mother)
• Rehman as Surendra Sinha
• Mac Mohan as Prakash (Michael's friend)
• Madan Puri as Mahipat Rai (Ravi's one-time accquaintance)
• Alankar Joshi as Billu Khanna (Ravi's younger brother)
• D.K. Sapru as Mr. Rajvansh (Neela's father)
• Shiv Kumar as Advocate Rane (Ravi's friend)
• Ashoo as Mona Sinha (Surendra's widow and Narendra's accomplice)
• Sajjan as Dr. Shah (Ravi's examiner and surgeon)
• Sudhir as Mr. Sharma (Ravi's colleague)

The film was a Hit at the box office.[2]

23rd Filmfare Awards:[3]

Nominated

• Best Supporting Actor – Pran
• Best Supporting Actress – Farida Jalal

• Majboor at IMDb