The family of Dilip Singh (Navin Nischol) and Devki (Sharmila Tagore) and son Jai had seen good days, but now the family fortunes had taken a fall. Dilip drove a taxi-Devki taught music. The small happy family never dreamed of what fate had in store. Dilip was killed in saving the life of Seth Kedarnath (Saeed Jaffery) and the murderers plotted and killed Devki too. Young Jai was left alone.
Bombay City-the city of Gold-where it does not take time for the most innocent and simple person to become smart. This is exactly what happened to young Jai. An orphan at the young age he befriended Teku (Kedar Khan) and his son Tunu (Rakesh Bedi) and the three of them lived a merry life-living by their wits, small-time crooks. In an attempt to make it big they tried to hijack a consignment of contraband gold belong to a smuggler Garga (Shared Saxena)-little did they realise that they had overreached themselves and soon both the gangsters and the law was on their tail. On the run, Jai lands up in Delhi-and still chased finds sanctuary in the house of Seth Kedar Nath (Saeed Jaffery). This was the same Kedarnath whose life had been saved by the heroic death of Jai's father. This was the same house where the killers of Jai's mother still lurked in the shadows-swindling the family wealth. But all these TRUTHS remained hidden-no one knew. This family consisting of Ranvir Nath (Pankaj Deheer), Gayatri (Rita Bhaduri) and their beautiful daughter Jyoti (Mamta) were expecting Rakesh Rajpal (Vivek Vaswani) from U.S.A. and Jai cleverly deceives the real Rakesh and sends him back to U.S.A. and himself takes his place. Soon he is joined by his Tau- i.e. Teku and Tunu. The three decide to launch mission 'Aashik-Aawara' trap Jyoti in love get married-the family would pay plenty of money just to get rid of these crooks. The plan was put into operation and in the process Jai did things that even he considered impossible-he averted a major financial disaster in the factory- he brought the separated parents of Jyoti together-he exposed the woman Sheela (Archana Puransingh) and her son Vikram (MohnishBehl) to be the bloodsuckers who were destroying the family. Jyoti was trapped in Love and so was Jai-because now for the first time he found the mother and family he yearned for in all his years as an orphan. And he found true love.
But the Truth was not hidden for long and once again Jai was on the street: AAWARA. But you cannot defeat a AASHIK and from the ashes, he arose, and faught his was back-bringing out the killer of his mother and saving the honour and wealth of the family by destroying the evil plans of the bloodsuckers who had thrived so long and thus proved that LOVE is the greatest Truth.
(From the official press booklet)