The story for this film was derived from the Bawla murder case. The maharaja of Holkar fell in love with a dancing girl named Mumtaz (Moti) who spurned his advances because she loved another man. In fact, the maharaja had the man kidnapped in full public view and killed.
This film claimed realist intent, mainly for its thinly veiled allusions to a major scandal in Bombay known as the Champsi-Haridas murder case.
This social film attacks Bombay's industrial parvenu class, initiating the realist-reformist melodrama as a genre. It tells of the street hawker Devdas, who goes to the city to make his fortune but, once successful, becomes an exploitative cotton mill owner and a callous snob knighted by the British.
