Sushil Verma (Raaj Kumar) is a surgeon in the Shimla Hospital. He lives on the hospital grounds in a doctor's house with his ageing mother and younger sister Munni (Kumari Naaz). Sushil's father died and his father's close friend paid for his medical school fees, thus creating a debt that Sushil's mother feels needs to be fulfilled.

Karuna (Meena Kumari) is a nurse who comes to the Shimla hospital and first encounters Dr. Verma during an emergency surgery. Both are clearly besotted with each other, but keep their feelings restrained.

By chance, on a nurses' beach day trip, Karuna meets Munni, who injures herself whilst playing. She takes Munni back to her house, not knowing that she is Dr. Verma's sister, and the house she is visiting belongs to him. She dresses Munni's wounds, sees how much work needs to be done in the house, and the fact that his mother is too ill to attend to household tasks. She immediately steps in and fulfills the duties of the housewife; cooking, cleaning and taking care of everyone. Sushil comes home to see this and falls even more in love.

However, later on, his mother organises a trip to Kashmir for the whole family, and conveniently guilt-trips Sushil into marrying Kusum (Nadira), the daughter of the man who paid for his medical school fees.

They come back to Shimla, and Karuna is devastated when she finds this out. Although she manages to conceal this for a while, situations keep arising and Kusum soon gets jealous of Sushil's preference for Karuna, and her perceived ill-treatment. Kusum manipulates and mistreats her mother-in-law and sister-in-law, until Sushil orders her out of the house. She goes back to Kashmir.

Dr. Verma's mother then realises her mistake, that she should have gotten him married to Karuna.

To avoid scandal, Karuna moves to another hospital. But Kusum seeks to enact revenge on her. Dr. Verma finds this out and tries to beat Kusum to Karuna, which leads to a clifftop high speed car chase, resulting in Kusum's death. The film concludes with the reunion of Karuna and Sushil.

• Raaj Kumar as Dr. Sushil K. Verma
• Meena Kumari as Karuna
• Nadira as Kusum
• Ruby Myers as Head Nurse
• Tun Tun as Haseena
• Helen as Cabaret Dancer
• Om Prakash as Girdhari
• Shammi as Sheela
• Kumari Naaz as Munni
• Pratima Devi as Mrs. K. Verma (as Protima Devi)
• Edwina as Nurse Rosie

All music composed by Shankar Jaikishan.

• 1961 Filmfare Best Music Director Award for Shankar Jaikishan

• Armaan (2003 film)