Prakash Mehra’s 1972 smash Samadhi is best remembered for Asha Parekh’s fabulous dance number Kaanta Lagaa.
The film is about dacoit Lakhan Singh who gives up the daaku life for domesticity. But circumstances force him to part with his family and take up arms again. Dharmendra plays the double role of the father and the son.
When Lakhan’s wife Champa (Parekh) falls severely ill, the reformed dacoit finds no aid for her treatment and resorts to crime. He kidnaps Seth Manoharlal’s (Abhi Bhattacharya) son, Ajay for the money. Before the ransom exchange, the little boy falls to death and a devastated Manoharlal is left ruing about his child’s fate.
A guilt-ridden Lakhan returns home to find Champa dead. Shaken by the turn of events, he returns to his gang along with his son, Jaswant. A couple of years later, Lakhan sees a distraught Manoharlal still waiting for his missing son. Filled with remorse, he gives away Jaswant to Manoharlal and assures him the child is Ajay.
Lakhan is sentenced to life imprisonment and Jaswant (now Ajay) grows up to be a spitting image of his father. This *minor* detail doesn’t seem to catch anyone’s attention EVER.
Not Manoharlal. Not even when he sees both of them face to face after Lakhan is released from jail and comes to meet him. In fact, it would take a high-voltage confrontation for Manoharlal to discover the ‘secret’.
And definitely not Ajay. An otherwise bright, quick-thinking man — who takes down a whole daaku gang single-handedly — the connection had to be spelled out to him.
Right to the climactic scene.
So imagine the poor man’s shock.
Flashback Bollywood 