The fictional story of the film involves a European trader named Lawrence who arrives in Saudi Arabia wearing a helmet with a cigar in his hand, accompanied by his femme fatale named Laila. After reaching in the country, he formulates a plan to extract petroleum from the Arabian Desert. He subsequently meets a person named Haris who works as an Arab blacksmith. Haris decides to resist the European trader, a former chieftain who has been exiled from the desert or the country.^[4] After she learns about his love, she returns to her home and this event leaves her heart broken. She then sings a song titled "Us bewafa ka shahar" (the city of the unfaithful) which became one of the prominent songs of the 1960s.

Laila, a femme fatale has been exiled from the tribe for her involvement in street dancing which is supposed to be a shameful act in the Arabian tribes. Despite being neglected by Haris, she wants him to take over the trader, and later she sets herself ablaze for Harris's victory in resistance and the oil refinery is damaged. She also sets herself ablaze as a result of her honour suicide in an attempt to regain her pride in the tribe and to save her country from the foreign occupiers.^{[citation needed]}

• Talish as Lawrence^[2]
• Musarrat Nazir as Laila^[2]
• Ejaz Durrani as Haris^[2]
• Husna as Aaliya^[2] while Emir opposes petroleum extraction. Laila falls in love with Haris, he however falls in love with Aaliya.^[4]
• Allauddin as Emir^[2][1]

Considered as an important film of 1962, Shaheed is among the only a few female-led films, that became successful at the box office too by accomplishing the status of a golden jubilee film.^[7][8][1][9]

Shaheed was selected among the "Top ten films" of the Pakistani cinema by the critic Aijaz Gul, as published in "Asian Film Journeys: Selection from Cinemaya".^[10] The critic also included it in the same list as published by BBC Urdu.^[2]

The film was remade by Hassan Tariq as Watan (1981), starring Rani, Muhammad Ali and Shahid in leading roles.