25 years after the serial blasts, Nana Patekar still won’t work with Sanjay Dutt

By Tarushi Choudhary

on March 12, 2018

It is 25 years today since the Mumbai serial blasts of March 12, 1993. And while Sanjay Dutt, who served a jail term for his involvement in an arms case related to the serial blasts, is now out and back to making films, not everybody in Bollywood has forgiven him for his alleged complicity in the attack on Mumbai that killed 257 and left 713 injured. Nana Patekar is among them. The three time National Award winning actor is still unforgiving. And he has publicly made it known that he will never work with Sanjay Dutt because of the 1993 serial blasts. His reaction is at odds with Bollywood that came out in Dutt’s support at the time and called for the Munna Bhai actor to be pardoned, describing him as a misguided youth and a victim of his star lineage.

Patekar, who is 67, lost his brother in the BEST bus blast at Worli that day. This was one of the 12 serial blasts on March 12, 1993, that ripped apart the social fabric of the city causing widespread death and destruction. Patekar’s wife missed getting killed only because she took an earlier bus. “I have not worked with him all through my career, I will not work with him in future too. I felt bad about what happened in 1993. I’m not saying Dutt is responsible… but even if he is in a small way, I don’t want to work with him. This isn’t personal, I’m not saying this because my brother was a victim, it’s got nothing to do with Hindu and Muslim also, I’m doing it for everybody who got killed that day,” the actor said. “That is the punishment I can give him from my side.”

Dutt was sentenced to six years in jail in 2007 for acquiring illegal weapons from men convicted for the 1993 Mumbai bombings but the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to five years and allowed him bail to finish work on some of his films in between his prison term. Dutt was cleared of conspiracy charges in the bombings but was found guilty of illegal possession of an AK-56 rifle and a pistol, weapons that he claimed were to protect him and his family during a period of rioting. Patekar thought that Dutt, the most high-profile of 100 people involved in the Mumbai bombings trial, had been let off lightly. “The nature of his crime is horrible. Why should justice be meted out differently for him?” Patekar had asked, outraged. “The law is different for a poor man and different for me, just because I am actor? Why should that be? “You will watch his films and make him a hero. Things don’t work like that.”