| Director | Chandrakant Kulkarni |
|---|---|
| Genre | comedy film |
| Country | India |
Two engineering college students, Abhijeet Vaidya (Umesh Kamat) and Harshavardhan Ghodke (Akshay Pendse), lie to their respective parents and plan to take a trip to Mumbai from Harshavardhan's relatives' red-coloured Scorpio car registered with the number "3417". After reaching their destination the next morning, the duo stops at a petrol pump in Chembur on the Mumbai-Pune Highway. While there, Abhijeet and Harshavardhan get their car tyres filled with air by a South Indian mechanic, Prabhudeva (Samir Choughule), also known as Tambi, and also jokingly converse with a dance artist, Nrutyachandrika Saraswatibai Jagaonkar (Nirmiti Sawant), whose dance troupe has stopped at the petrol pump as well for their bus repair work. While Harshavardhan is getting petrol filled in their car by the petrol pump employee, Pandurang Raoji Kute, Abhijeet decides to go to purchase snacks from a store located in the vicinity. He wakes up the irritated store owner, Sawant (Girish Joshi), from his sleep, and manages to persuade him to let him purchase snacks from his store. While shopping, Abhijeet quickly shoplifts a CD to teach Sawant a lesson for his rude behaviour. Abhijeet and Harshavardhan depart the petrol pump.
Soon after, Abhijeet and Harshavardhan are apprehended by the Mumbai police at a nearby random checkpoint for unknown reasons. They initially believe that they have been arrested for shoplifting the CD from Sawant's store, and confess their crime to the investigating police officer, Inspector P. J. Ambildhake (Ganesh Yadav). After being taken to the police station, however, the duo is shocked to learn that Pandurang was robbed and stabbed fatally with a gupti (an Indian weapon which resembles a swordstick) inside the petrol pump premises, and that they have been charged with the crime due to circumstantial evidence, and the confession to the shoplifting being misunderstood for one to the stabbing. Being stranded in a strange city with no contacts, Abhijeet helplessly calls his ingenuous mother, Shaku (Amita Khopkar), from the police station in his village to explain their position and requests her to somehow free them from this matter. Shaku informs Abhijeet that his village-based maternal uncle, Advocate Keshav Kunthalgirikar (Makarand Anaspure), is a lawyer of dubious credentials in their family. Keshav, who has been communicated by Shaku, arrives in Mumbai and visits Abhijeet and Harshavardhan in prison, advising them to be truthful about their involvement in the murder.
Being totally new to the practice of law, Keshav embarrasses himself before the prosecution counsel, Advocate Phadnavis (Sachin Khedekar), and Judge Prabhune (Mohan Agashe) in the first hearing of the trial. Due to his disrespect and failure to follow courtroom decorum, Prabhune punishes him for contempt of court and sentences Keshav to imprisonment for two days. In prison, Keshav meets a serial gambler, Bhai (Sanjay Mone), and his gang, who all bully and make fun of Keshav. However, Keshav's girlfriend, Neha (Sharvari Jamenis), arrives to visit him in Mumbai and bails him out from prison. After a lot of deliberation, the couple checks into a hotel room, where Neha is shown to be romantic and Keshav shy. In the next hearing, Keshav argues that the only evidence against Abhijeet and Harshavardhan is circumstantial, which Phadnavis counters by stating that the available evidence is strong enough to convict them. Later, it is shown that Harshavardhan's father, Suryakant Ghodke (Arun Nalawade), who is a respected politician contesting in the elections in India, learns about his and Abhijeet's arrest and decides to arrange for a more experienced lawyer rather than the raw and inexperienced Keshav. He arranges for Advocate G. B. Godbole (Pushkar Shrotri), but he stammers constantly and has great difficulty in forming cohesive sentences, leading to a lot of amusement in the court. Suryakant is, however, tremendously impressed with Keshav's advocacy skills and decides to retain him, while Godbole is fired by Harshavardhan.
In the following hearing, the prosecution examines Saraswatibai and Tambi as they both were the witnesses at the petrol pump when the murder occurred. However, Keshav's cross-examination with them establishes that the possibility of another red-coloured Scorpio car being present at the petrol pump during the time of the murder cannot be ruled out, thus creating reasonable doubt. Further, the prosecution examines Sawant, who is still furious about the fact that Abhijeet disturbed his sleep, and vociferously states that the murderer could not have been anyone else, but the accused Abhijeet and Harshavardhan. Keshav cross-examines Sawant and exploits gaps in his testimony, establishing that his attention was diverted from the petrol pump around the time of the murder, and thus he could have not stated with absolute certainty that no one else rather than Abhijeet and Harshavardhan is the murderer. In the next hearing, the prosecution also examines Inspector Ambildhake, where Keshav even discusses the probability of the police manipulating evidence to trap Abhijeet and Harshavardhan, which further weakens the prosecution case.
At the end of the hearing, Phadnavis, seemingly impressed with the novice Keshav's advocacy skills, invites him to his farmhouse for a drink that night. During their meeting, Phadnavis carefully teases Keshav around his law school days, his graduation, and his initial days as a lawyer, which Keshav hesitantly answers, and then gets into a debate with Phadnavis about how law and advocacy is more important than just earning money and manipulating the legal system to win cases. Phadnavis is furious with this argument for having a record of not losing a single case, and swears that he will destroy Keshav's case in the next hearing. In the final hearing, Keshav concludes his arguments and has seemingly succeeded in convincing Prabhune of Abhijeet and Harshavardhan's innocence.