Aarti (Meena Kumari) is a dedicated and hard-working doctor, who believes that her skills should be used for the welfare of patients only. In contrast her fiance, Dr. Prakash (Ashok Kumar) believes in the opposite. Then one day, Aarti's is saved from drowning by a poor, unemployed youth, Deepak (Pradeep Kumar), and both eventually fall in love. Although her dad is opposed to her having any relationship with Deepak, they marry, and Aarti moves in with Deepak and his family: his brother, Niranjan (Ramesh Deo), Niranjan's wife, Jaswanti (Shashikala), three of her children; and Deepak's dad (Gajanan Jagirdar). Dr. Prakash is enraged and humiliated, and vows to avenge this. He gets married to Ramona, but is unable to get Aarti from his mind, and he keeps in touch with Aarti, and does succeed in bringing a discord in their marital life, so much so that Deepak asks Aarti to leave, and she moves in back with her dad. Then Deepak has an accident, and Dr. Prakash is the only surgeon who can operate on him, and he agrees to do so on condition that Aarti surrenders herself to him forever.