The film unfolds in the impoverished village of Laholi, where, after droughts, most villagers mortgage their possessions to the local Thakurani Karamkali [Sudha Chandran]. One of the few entertainments the villagers can afford is the Malaamal Weekly lottery, a glimmer of hope in hard times.
Lilaram [Paresh Rawal] is the village’s sole educated man and serves as the intermediary between the lottery organization and the villagers, earning a commission whenever someone wins. When he reads the winning numbers and discovers the top prize of one crore, he hatches a plan to claim the ticket for himself. He hosts a dinner (mortgaging his wife’s beloved pet goat Gattu to the Thakurani to pay for it) and invites all the lottery players, but the winner does not turn up. By elimination, he deduces that the winner is Anthony [Tiku Talsania], the town drunk, and reasons that Anthony didn’t show up because he knew he had won. He goes to Anthony’s house and finds him dead, the winning ticket clutched in his hand and a quiet, contented expression on his face.
Lilaram attempts to pry the ticket from Anthony’s fingers but is thwarted by the stiffness of the corpse. He eventually frees it, only to have Ballu Balwant / Ballu [Om Puri] enter and discover him standing over the body with what appears to be the murder weapon. Lilaram tells Ballu the truth and convinces him to stay silent in exchange for sharing the lottery winnings between them. Soon they are joined by Kanhaiya [Ritesh Deshmukh], Ballu’s loyal assistant who harbors a secret romance with Sukhmani [Reema Sen], and, on Ballu’s promise that he would marry Sukhmani to him, Kanhaiya agrees to join the scheme.
Unfortunately for them, Anthony managed to call the lottery commission before dying and provided his name, address, his sister, and several people to whom he owed money, informing them of his good fortune. The lottery inspector is on his way to interview Anthony. To cover up the incident, Ballu pretends to be the living Anthony, and the inspector seems satisfied. After that, Ballu, Kanhaiya, and Lilaram are introduced to a solitary man named Joseph [Shakti Kapoor], as Kanhaiya also fails to hide Anthony’s body but harbors a secret romance with Sukhmani. All of them succeed in burying Anthony, but Bajbahadur, aka Bajey [Rajpal Yadav], Thakurani’s brother, learns of their secret and begins to threaten them.
A few days later, Chokheylal Kanhaiya’s father [Govardhan Asrani] arrives in the village, hears of Kanhaiya’s insolence, and locks his son in Ballu’s barn to keep him from interfering with the plan to extract lottery money. Sukhmani’s desperate act—an attempted suicide—shakes Ballu into reconsidering freeing Kanhaiya, though by then Kanhaiya has already escaped. Meanwhile, Gattu is sold by the Thakurani to the butchers, leaving Leela and Ballu’s wife heartbroken. At night, Lilaram, Ballu, Chokheylal, and Joseph manage to catch Bajey, but they fail to kidnap him and end up kidnapping Joseph by mistake. Bajey is later seized by another gang from a neighboring village in a vendetta.
The lottery inspector finally arrives and delivers a draft to Ballu. In the ensuing pursuit, Thakurani and Bajey’s gang close in to reveal the truth about Anthony’s lottery ticket. A chaotic chase ends with Thakurani’s motorcycle crashing into the inspector’s car, sending her plunging into the town river. The villagers strike a bargain, letting the inspector go in exchange for his silence. The film closes with the village members enjoying their newfound wealth, while Bajey is left as a beggar, a stark contrast to the others’ fortune.
