On a college campus in Kerala, a group of students led by Prathapan, Raveendran, continually stirs trouble with strikes and by harassing female students, casting a shadow over campus life. Nearby, Venu, Ratheesh, a corrupt MLA from a small party, holds the balance of power for the ruling government, and the people’s fight against a local factory’s water pollution is tempered by his bribe-filled restraint. In contrast, Comrade Krishna Pillai, Balan K Nair, an honest and ideologically driven politician, organizes the community to challenge the factory’s impact, pressing the excise minister, a former ally, to take decisive action, only to find the minister tethered to Venu and unable to intervene. The tension between civic duty and political complicity paints a stark early portrait of a system under pressure.
Salim, Mammootty, a Kerala man working in the Gulf and a devoted ally of Pillai, returns home with support for Pillai’s movement, ready to stand with the people against the factory’s harm. Porinju, Achankunju, a local spurious liquor maker and a goon aligned with Venu’s faction, comes back from jail, and the liquor sector in the region is controlled by Karunakaran, a wealthy liquor baron who happens to be Prathapan’s father. Karunakaran’s goons attack Porinju’s liquor unit, prompting Venu to broker a compromise between Porinju and Karunakaran, allowing Porinju to begin producing liquor for Karunakaran under a tenuous peace that masks deeper tensions.
At the college, Prathapan escalates his troubled behavior by forcefully kissing a poorer classmate, Radha, Vanitha Krishnachandran. The principal dismisses him, but Venu intervenes and ensures his readmission, a move that infuriates Radha and drives her to speak out. In retaliation, Prathapan targets Radha for speaking up, and she ends up jumping from a window to her death. The campus crackdown brings the authorities into play, and Lalu Alex as A.S.P. Alexander arrests Prathapan and his gang, intending to hold them. Yet when orders flow from above, Alexander is compelled to release Prathapan, exposing the troubling realities of a system under pressure.
Pillai’s path crosses with Prathapan’s mother, and a painful revelation emerges: Pillai and she had a past closeness when Pillai was in hiding and nearly married her—an old chapter complicated by Karunakaran’s betrayal, as he once acted as Pillai’s ally and then tipped off the police. The truth of those past ties underscores the tangled loyalties at play. Salim returns again, this time facing unemployment in the Gulf, while the political landscape shifts toward a major party meeting. Karunakaran drives Porinju to adulterate large quantities of liquor with surgical spirit to fuel the event, a reckless move that sets off a deadly sequence.
The ensuing tragedy claims over two thousand lives when countless attendees drink the adulterated liquor, and Alexander springs into action to investigate. He holds firm evidence against Karunakaran, yet a bribe to shut the case appears to blur his resolve. The government’s outrage grows as the excise minister is pressured to resign, and Venu seizes an opportunity to realign power by withdrawing support from the government, aiming to crown himself chief minister. Pillai, rallying the people, resists this move and leads organized resistance against Venu’s bid for power. In a brutal demonstration of the costs of political vengeance, Karunakaran’s henchmen strike, killing Pillai in front of Karunakaran’s wife, who immediately alerts the police. Karunakaran is eventually arrested, but the episode leaves the political landscape unsettled, and Venu’s hopes of becoming chief minister are ultimately thwarted by the public’s determined stand.
In the end, the narrative threads—corruption, student unrest, honest resistance, and the human cost of political games—converge to depict a society wrestling with accountability and moral choice. The film unfolds as a careful balance of social critique and human consequences, never shying away from the scandals that drive the town’s fate and the costly battles waged by those who fight for integrity amid pressure from powerful interests.
