Ram Balram 1980

Two brothers, Ram and Balram, grow up with loving parents, until their scheming Jagatpal shatters that peace. Jagatpal murders the boys’ parents and lies that their deaths were an accident, promising to raise them himself.

He compels the elder brother Ram to become a thief, Ram also works as a mechanic to mask his thefts. He enrolls the younger Balram in school and eventually pushes him toward a police career, keeping a tight grip on both boys so that Ram surrenders most of his wages to his uncle and is allowed only a small amount for pocket money.

When Balram returns as a fully fledged police officer, Jagatpal reveals his plan: use Ram to target India’s biggest smugglers, while Balram, now in the force, will shield his brother from arrest. The brothers have reservations, but Jagatpal threatens to beat them as he did in their youth, pressing a needle at the edge of his cane to coerce them whenever they step out of line.

To outmaneuver him, Balram tells his superiors that Ram intends to infiltrate the smuggler underworld so Balram can arrest them, and Ram becomes a police informer.

The plan starts to work as Ram rises to become a lieutenant under a major smuggler, Suleman, and robs both Suleman and another big smuggler, Chaman. Balram’s sharp arrest rate makes him one of the force’s most successful officers, even as Jagatpal grows enormously wealthy from Ram’s illicit gains.

The brothers also find love: Shobha, the daughter of a college professor, for Balram, and Madhu, a girl who has moved to the area with her mother in search of her father, for Ram. Unbeknownst to Ram, Madhu believes her father to be Jagatpal. Her courtesan mother, Tara, tries to extort money from Jagatpal, but he refuses to believe he is Madhu’s father. His suspicions are confirmed when he catches the mother paying off a former acquaintance; the man confesses that Madhu is not Jagatpal’s daughter.

The plan unravels when the boys’ mother returns—she did not die after all. She reveals Jagatpal’s actions to the brothers, and they unite to take him down.