| Director | Yash Chopra |
|---|---|
| Genre | action film, drama film |
| Runtime | 174 min |
| Country | India |
| Box office | ₹7.5 crore |
Anand Verma resides in a modest home with his wife Sumitra and their two young sons Vijay Verma (Amitabh Bachchan) and Ravi Verma (Shashi Kapoor). He is a principled and well-respected trade union leader, who leads struggling labourers on a strike as they are depending on him to better their lives with concessions from their owner Badri Prasad. However, Prasad retaliates by kidnapping Anand's family and forcing him to sign a contract giving away the labourers' rights, in order to save his family's lives. When the striking labourers learn about Anand's actions, they all curse him and thrash him nearly to death, unaware that Anand was blackmailed to do so. The labourers even persecute Anand's family, and some of them drunkenly capture Vijay and tattoo his left arm with the Hindi words "मेरा बाप चोर है” (English: ("My father is a thief"). Unable to bear the humiliation, Anand escapes from the town and decides to spend his remaining life aimlessly traveling in trains, abandoning his family for whom he had abandoned his principles and ideals. In desperation, Sumitra brings Vijay and Ravi to Mumbai and resorts to low-wage manual labour to raise her sons alone. Their home is on the footpath under a huge bridge that is home to millions of homeless poor people of the city.
As Vijay and Ravi grow up in the slums of Mumbai, Vijay has an acute awareness of his father's humiliation, for he has been victimized for his father's supposed misdeeds, and is reminded of his past by the ever-present tattoo on his arm. He also refuses to enter a temple, stating that he wishes to chart his own destiny and not beg for it from the deities. Vijay Verma starts out as a shoeshiner and later becomes a dockworker in his youth, sacrificing his own education in order to enable Ravi to study. On the other hand, Ravi is a perfect citizen and is unwavering in his commitment to law and righteousness. Although he is unable to obtain gainful employment, Ravi romances Veera, the daughter of DCP Narang, by whom he is sent for police training and soon earns the rank of Sub-Inspector. In the process of fighting for his rights, Vijay refuses to pay the weekly extortion to the henchmen of the shipyard owner Samant, who is also a crime boss. Vijay proceeds to thrash several of Samant's henchmen, causing his mother Sumitra to berate him. Vijay sarcastically asks her whether she expects him "also" to escape like a coward, implying that he criticises his father's actions, causing a perturbed Sumitra to slap Vijay and half-heartedly defend Anand. The news of Vijay’s beating of Samant’s men reaches Samant's rival, Mulk Raj Daavar, who hires Vijay to protect his smuggled gold bullion that has been thrice hijacked by Samant. Vijay sells the information to Samant to help him hijack the gold bullion, takes the money from Samant, then captures the gold bullion from his warehouse and hands it over to Daavar, who rewards Vijay with a huge sum of money, allowing him to purchase a palatial home for his family.
Meanwhile, DCP Narang provides Ravi his first assignment to apprehend and arrest some of the hardcore criminals and smugglers in Mumbai, which also include Daavar and Vijay. Ravi is shocked for having never associated his brother with criminal activities, and must now decide between apprehending Vijay and quitting the police force. Later, Ravi shoots an impoverished boy Chander in the leg non-fatally in an attempt to arrest him for committing theft, only to find out that Chander had stolen only some bread for his family. After admitting Chander to a hospital under police custody, a remorseful Ravi visits his home, offering his family some food and confessing his action, but Chander's enraged mother berates Ravi and accuses him of colluding with the state in protecting those who store goods in warehouses, and hunting down petty thieves trying to feed their starving families. However, Chander's father, who is a retired schoolteacher, forgives Ravi and justifies the shooting by stating that the stealing no matter of a lakh or of a penny is a crime, and that all criminals should be treated equally and it would lead to anarchy if all the poor and needy resort to the same life. After hearing both sides from Chander's parents, Ravi, who was initially reluctant to act against his own brother, is finally motivated to agree to take his case from DCP Narang.
When Ravi investigates that Vijay has acquired wealth overnight by crime, he confronts Vijay and orders him to surrender himself to the police. However, Vijay refuses to do so, citing all the injustice caused to him and his family. Nevertheless, Ravi decides to leave the house purchased by him and go to live in his police quarters. Sumitra too is disgusted with Vijay and chooses to live with Ravi, even refusing to accept Vijay's gift of the high-rise apartment where she had once worked as a manual labourer. Ravi then completes his task assigned by DCP Narang and arrests many henchmen from the gangs of Samant, Davaar and Vijay (including Daavar himself), causing a feud to develop between Vijay and Ravi. Vijay enters into a sexual relationship with Anita, a prostitute whom he meets at a bar. Around the same time, Anand's dead body is discovered inside a train and his funeral is performed by Vijay. Anita advises Vijay to erase the tattoo on his arm through plastic surgery, but Vijay states that doing so cannot erase the words on the tattoo from his heart and soul. Meanwhile, Sumitra falls severely ill and Vijay is also unable to visit her at the hospital due to the police appointed by Ravi to arrest him. A furious Vijay enters the temple for the first time, and confronts the deity for punishing him at the cost of his faithful mother.