When Aditya turned bai-sexual
This was perhaps the worst scandal that made headlines during the late 1980s. Aditya was unhappily married to Zarina and was looking for a woman to cheat on. It was the exact time when a free-thinking Pooja Bedi walked into his life. She found Aditya so passionate and possessive (that was apparently a turn-on) that she didn't care about the fact that Aditya was married with a son and a daughter.
There is a strange way that Pancholi communicated to the media about his love affairs. He would start taking the woman to parties and when you see the woman with him too often, and then you could safely say that the woman he's often seen accompanying is the one he is dating.
Now, that was the time when he was being seen with Pooja Bedi too often. Soon, the media found out that Aditya had shifted into Pooja's house and were living in. Well, back in those days the affairs in Bollywood used to be quite brazen and the media soon brushed it off as an extra-marital affair where 'the couple had no shame' till this incident happened.
There was this 15-year-old girl from Uttar Pradesh who had run away from her home to become a Bollywood actor and saw her starry dreams come crashing down. As an alternative, she took up the job of a maid at one of the stars' houses, Pooja Bedi. She hoped someday God would smile at her and let her bag a Bollywood role.
This maid found a very 'sympathetic' person in Aditya Pancholi who started talking to her and listening to her woes. All of it happened, when Pooja was not at home. The interaction would soon lead to a sexual encounter one afternoon.
As is the case with most women, they immediately can sense when something is amiss in her man. It was Pooja, who asked the maid if Sahab did something to her and out came the reply that she had slept with Sahab as he had promised to get her a Bollywood role.
Now, in those days everybody termed him as a rapist but actually it was consensual sex as Pooja clarified to the media later on. However, according to the law it was still considered rape as it involved a minor; the consent of a 15-year-old is not admissible in the eyes of the Indian law.
After the maid confessed to her, she confronted Aditya and he admitted that he had sex with her on the pretext of getting her a role in the movies.
May be that was Aditya's first experience to play sugar daddy, but it made headlines as there was a charge of rape heaped against him by the police.
Pooja soon dumped Aditya and moved on in life terming it as the darkest days of her life. Even now she talks about her former boyfriend sleeping with her maid with utter disbelief and disgust.
If you feel that Aditya made peace with himself after this incident, you are wrong. The streak of playing sugar-daddy finally turned into a reality and generated a much bigger and juicier controversy in the years to come.
____________________________________
Date: June 27, 2004, Place: Juhu-Tara Road, Juhu, Mumbai Time: 3.30 pm
It was a rainy day in Mumbai. Aditya Pancholi was sitting in his car on one side of the road. He was supervising the construction of the building for a friend who had gone to Dubai for some work. It was raining so heavily that the road was empty. The downpour prevented the actor from stepping out of his car. With one of the car doors open, his eyes began wandering off out of boredom. He wondered if passersby had recognised him.
On the other side of the road, a thin and fair girl was sitting on a bike under a roof of a shop. She was drenched. They both seemed to have emerged from the nearby Asha Chandra Acting Institute and were stuck in the rains. It was the guy who spotted Aditya sitting inside the car and nudged the girl to look at him.
Minutes later, the girl walked out from the shade, crossed the road and stood in front of Aditya. She said, "Hi, I am Kangana. I want to talk to you."
Aditya looked at the girl. Pale looking, the toll of struggle was beginning to show on her face. That day, they just exchanged phone numbers. But the pale face and the attractive eyes remained with Aditya.
The 'love' story begins
It started with a phone call – a phone call from a struggler, who was a very beautiful woman. There was no way that Aditya could have ignored the call. Aditya says that Kangana kept calling him and pleaded if she could meet him again. Aditya didn't agree at first, but later relented as he was as keen to meet her again. They met at a coffee shop at Khar and the meetings never stopped after that.
Within a month, Kangana had shifted from the PG accommodation that she was staying to a fairly large flat in Andheri that belonged to Aditya's friend. Within 15 days, Aditya left his wife and children and moved in with Kangana. That is when the film industry became aware of Kangana as the latest girl in Aditya's life.
Aditya's wife, Zarina Wahab called up her friends to confirm as Aditya stopped coming home and soon realised that she had lost her husband to Kangana. She told her friends that she wouldn't react to it. She took the incident rather stoically saying that she has turned old and Aditya needed a new girl in his life. This encouraged the relationship to grow further. By now, it was 2005.
The networking starts
Aditya started to introduce Kangana to filmmakers and took her out to filmi parties. Though she didn't bag any significant project then, but Aditya painted the town red with her. Everybody in the industry seemed to know about Kangana by then. Aditya starts looking for an apartment where he and Kangana could move in together. Kangana starts getting projects and filmmakers finally start opening dialogues with her.
It was during this time when Anurag Basu offered her the role of Simran in Gangster. Though it is said that Kangana pictures were passed around by Aditya, Kangana had said in an interview that Basu spotted her in a cafe. Whatever it was, Kangana clinched her first Bollywood film, which turned to be her big break! A year passed by when Kangana started shooting for the film while still living in with Aditya.
Here are some earlier pictures of Kangana Ranaut and a pictures from parties where Aditya and Kangana were snapped together. The article continues after the slideshow.
Things start going wrong
Date: October 5 2006, Place Rispana Colony, Dehradun, Time: 10.30 am.
A perverted guy throws acid on Rangoli, Kangana's sister who was staying in Dehradun. Her sister is saved by a whisker and Aditya swings into action. This was the first acid attack in Dehradun's history.
Aditya rushed to Dehradun and gets the guy arrested. He also arranges for Rangoli's treatment and later shifts her to Mumbai. Aditya tells Kangana that he will foot the bills of her surgery. But it was from this point that Kangana's relationship with Aditya started hitting a rocky patch. They started fighting frequently. Aditya used to get jealous because Kangana was increasingly coming close to other stars in the industry.
In Aditya's own words, there was once a violent fight with her when she had returned from a schedule in South Africa. Kangana was shooting for a film titled Shaka Laka Boom Boom. Aditya hit her. From here on, it was just a matter of time before they would break up and on a violent note.
Before we go further and tell you about that violent incident, here is a song from Gangster that made Kangana a star overnight. Actually, it was this song that changed the course of her carer for ever. She never had to look back after this song's promo was released on television. The article continues after this video.
The incident that rocked Bollywood
Date: May 5, 2007, Place: Andheri, Time: 11 pm
The fights had reached such a proportion that Kangana moved out of the house. It was not clear where she was staying. Aditya had become too possessive and Kangana wanted to break free from him. Besides, Gangster had also made her a star by now. But nothing prepared Kangana with what was coming next.
Aditya relentlessly chased Kangana when she tried to break free from. He wasn't able to digest the fact that Kangana was dumping him and kept calling her on her mobile. It was during one of these calls that ended up with both abusing each other. Kangana was at a party and Aditya decided to come there and confront her. Kangana somehow sensed it and beat a hasty retreat from the party. She called an auto-rickshaw to go and hide at a friend's place just to escape from Aditya's clutches. But Aditya chased her in his car, stopped the auto-rickshaw in the middle of the road and forced her out the rickshaw. Kangana was slapped and abused in the middle of the road for almost half an hour before Aditya sped off.
A harried Kangana called up Additional Commissioner of Police (West) Bipin Bihari. Bipin didn't pick up the call. He, however, replied to her text messages and advised her to go to the nearby police station and lodge a complaint.
Kangana went to the Versova police station and lodged a complaint against him. Aditya, the very next day, lodged a counter complaint. Both the complaints were filed and probed by then police inspector of Versova Police Station, Mohan Shanke.
What followed was a media circus and an end of a love story that was never meant to be.
Before we part, here is a video clip which is a slightly dramatised version of the story above.
So, this is how Aditya Pancholi became media's favourite bad boy. All of this started when Sooraj was a child. That perhaps explains why he was so scared about turning into a bad boy when he was getting ready to shoot for his first film. But it seems now that nobody can help him now. He has started from where his father finished the race — of being the bad man of Bollywood.
comment:
p_commentcount