Zeenat is a 1945 Indian Muslim social melodrama film directed by Syed Shaukat Hussain Rizvi and starring Noor Jehan, Yakub, Majid, Himalayawala, and Karan Dewan.
[2] It is the story of a young girl who loses her husband a few days after her wedding as a result of a fall from a horse but not before they have spent a night together unbeknownst to others, leaving her pregnant.
During Rukhsati (departure of the bride) the horse on which the bridegroom Sharafat is sitting shies away from the sound of firecrackers, causing the groom to fall and sustain critical head injuries.
Next day Sharafat suffers a paralytic attack from cerebral haemorrhage and exhaustion, but not before he writes about the night he passed with his new bride in his diary.
He has no idea of the child's parents but decides to look after her to the extent of giving up his idle life and taking up a job in order to stay put in one place.
Faced with Liaqat and her past history Zeenat denies that the baby is hers but stays on in the house as an ayah (domestic help) in order to be close to her daughter.
Fifteen years later Sayida (Nasseem) is a young girl in love with Akhtar Hussain (Karan Dewan), who comes to study Persian from her teacher father, Hakim Sahib.
It was the first all-female qawwali and picturised on the then very young Shashikala, Baby Khurshid, Rehana, Zohrabai, Zebunnissa, Yasmin and the singer Kalyani herself.