Summary

The film begins with doctor Dhayalan (Boys Rajan) being interviewed by the press: he tells that the baby girls should be saved from infanticide in India and explains how there will be a lesser number of women in the years to come. In a remote village, the village chief Nattamai (Shanmugasundaram) organises a competition to decide who will marry the single woman. There are now twenty-four unmarried young men waiting to get married and seven girls who have not yet come of age in the village. The young men may not marry women from other villages due to their customs, so they have to wait until their village girl attains puberty and the competition will decide it. At the village pachayat, Nattamai finds that the fourteen-year-old girl Vennila (Varshini) who is from their village is living in the city. He then orders that Vennila (Varshini) will marry one of the villagers in four years. Four years later, Vennila comes to the village and the twenty-four men try to woo her. Later, Kumaran (Sri Hari), son of a rich jeweller, comes to the village to give Vennila the jewels her father ordered and he accidentally kisses her. After multiple encounters, they eventually fall in love with each other. In the meantime, one of the young men eloped with a girl from another village, when the Nattamai comes to know about it, he abducts them and burns them alive in public. In the past, an astrologer told the ruthless village chief Muthulingam (Nambirajan) that a baby girl will destroy the village in the future so Muthulingam killed all the baby girl, the years passed, and there were no girls in the village. After Muthulingam's death, the new village chief stopped this inhuman activity. Tired of this impractical custom, Nattamai and the villagers let Kumaran and Vennila live together. The young men are now allowed to get marry girls from other villages.