Plot
Beta is the story of Raju (Anil Kapoor), the only child of a widowed multi-millionaire. Raju's father can provide him anything he wants, but Raju's only desire is to have a mother's love. To please him, his father gets married to Laxmi (Aruna Irani), thinking that she will take care of Raju. Raju becomes completely devoted to his stepmother, doing whatever she wishes. Raju's stepmother keeps Raju uneducated, under the pretext that education would get her son a job working for other people, while she wants her him to be self-employed. As he grows up, Raju's father is gradually isolated from the family and locked in a dark room of the family home, being labelled as mentally unstable.
Raju, meanwhile, meets Saraswati (Madhuri Dixit). Raju sees her being abducted and assaulted at a fair. After he saves her, the two fall in love. Raju marries Saraswati after everyone in the village believes that she is no longer chaste. Saraswati discovers that Laxmi's motherly love for Raju is fake and all that Laxmi is interested in is capturing Raju's wealth. She is horrified to find Raju's father being treated as a mentally ill patient. Only after speaking to him does she realise that the reason for Raju's naive nature and uneducated status is because his stepmother manipulated him so that she can take advantage of him. Laxmi has another son from the father who is being educated but also seeks Raju's wealth which his mother Laxmi intends for him to inherit. And thus begins a battle within the household between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law which involves Saraswati trying to outdo Laxmi.
Initially, Saraswati allows Raju's father to come out of his prison and insists that there is nothing wrong with him. She voices her concerns to Raju about his mother, resulting in Saraswati being slapped repeatedly around the courtyard of the house in front of all the family members. Saraswati is ready to leave but wisely decides to apologise to her mother-in-law, only to take an oath to protect her husband and her house from Laxmi's immoral intentions. This humiliation does not deter Saraswati who cleverly starts exposing Laxmi's every step in a dignified manner for the sake of her husband. She publically exposes the fact that Raju's younger step-brother has not received a degree in Medicine, rather that he has bought a fake one. She gives Laxmi a taste of her own medicine by causing her to slip which leads to an over-protective Raju to look after her and not allow her to do anything but lay down — scuppering any plans Laxmi intends to execute.
Upon discovering that Saraswati is pregnant, Laxmi decides that enough is enough and tries to kill Saraswati by mixing poison with saffron that Laxmi will mix with her milk. However, when Saraswati discovers this, she approaches Raju and tells him the truth once again. Raju refuses to believe her, even when she takes an oath upon her unborn child's life and decides to prove Saraswati wrong by offering to drink the poisoned milk himself. Only when Raju begins to cough up blood, does he realise that Saraswati was telling the truth. He confronts his mother in his usual innocent manner and asks her why she had forsaken him; he tells her that, had she simply asked him for his wealth, he would have happily agreed to give her all he had. He tells Laxmi that his dying wish will be that he would request his mother to at least once with a clean heart to call him 'her son', so that he may die in peace. His words touch Laxmi deeply and she realises the cruelty that she has shown the only son who has ever loved her. There is a brief altercation between Laxmi and her real son who still wishes to procure Raju's wealth. Raju, in his deteriorating state still manages to save his mother from his step-brother.
The film concludes with Raju recovering following treatment and agreeing to give up his worldly possessions to his mother and leaving home with his wife and father. At the last moment, Laxmi begs him not to leave, claiming to have learnt the error of her ways; she tears up the property papers and tells him that she does not want his wealth, all she wants is 'her son' and nothing more.
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