Did Sanjay Khan Assault Zeenat Aman?

‘I just want to say that this fake story which keeps coming up on social media about my father beating Zeenat Aman and her eye getting hurt, that’s all hogwash.’

An old controversy involving actor-filmmaker Sanjay Khan and Zeenat Aman has been stoked after Khan’s eldest daughter Farah Khan Ali denied long-standing allegations that her father physically assaulted Zeenat decades ago.

Speaking on Vickey Lalwani’s podcast, Farah said that the widely-circulated account of Sanjay Khan assaulting Zeenat Aman and causing a permanent injury to her right eye was ‘hogwash’.

‘I was very young at that point, around nine or 10 years old, so I don’t have very strong memories. But I just want to say that this fake story which keeps coming up on social media about my father beating Zeenat Aman and her eye getting hurt, that’s all hogwash,’ Farah said on the podcast.

‘My father has never raised his hand on my mother or any of his daughters. He is not a violent man who would raise a finger on a woman.’

Farah Khan Ali’s Claims

Farah claimed that Zeenat’s eye condition was hereditary.

‘My mother is the most honest person and she told me that my father never raised his hand on Zeenat Aman. Zeenat’s eye was also smaller, so it was something genetic which happened to Miss Aman and not what was written. This nonsense that my father beat her is bull****. I am happy I can say this on camera today because I want to clarify that it is not true,’ she added.

The Original Controversy

Sanjay Khan married Zarine Khan in 1966, and the couple have four children, Farah Khan Ali, Simone Arora, Sussanne Khan, Zayed Khan.

In 1978, Sanjay Khan and Zeenat Aman reportedly entered into a marriage under Muslim Personal Law. The marriage lasted less than a year.

In 1979 and 1980, several film magazines carried reports alleging that Sanjay Khan had assaulted Zeenat Aman during an altercation at Mumbai’s Taj Hotel after a dispute over the shooting schedule of the film Abdullah.

The reports claimed the actor sustained serious injuries to her right eye. The allegations have remained part of Bollywood folklore for decades but have never been tested in a court of law.

Zeenat Aman’s Statement on Her Eye Condition

Photograph: Kind courtesy Zeenat Aman/Instagram

While Zeenat Aman has never publicly spoken about the alleged hotel incident, she addressed her eye condition in an Instagram post in 2023.

‘There has been an elephant in the room with me for the past 40 years. It is time to show this elephant the door. I have a condition known as ptosis, the result of an injury I suffered many decades ago that damaged the muscles around my right eye,’ she wrote.

She added that the condition progressively worsened and eventually affected her vision.

‘When so much of one’s career is predicated on one’s appearance, coming to terms with a dramatic change to it is difficult. I know for a fact that this ptosis narrowed my opportunities and made me the subject of unwanted attention,’ Zeenat wrote in 2023.

But Zeenat did not reveal how the injury occurred or identify anyone responsible.

‘Sanjay Khan accused her of having an affair’

Following Farah Khan Ali’s remarks, Filmfare Editor Jitesh Pillai posted scans of a January 1980 Cine Blitz article, detailing the alleged incident. The report claimed that Zeenat Aman had travelled from Lonavla to Bombay after receiving repeated calls from Sanjay Khan over reshoots for Abdullah.

According to the magazine, she went to the Taj Hotel, where Sanjay Khan was attending a party to discuss the issue.

The article alleged that an argument escalated into a physical assault inside an adjoining room and cited purported eyewitness accounts and medical evidence. The contents of the article remain allegations published by the magazine. No court has ruled on the claims.

Sharing the archived report, Pillai wrote that it was being reposted to ‘set the record straight’ and noted that the article had never been challenged at the time of publication.

We publish an excerpt from the Cine Blitz article:

‘At 4.00 pm, on Saturday, November 3. Zeenat received a trunk call at the Ingleside Inn, Lonavla. It was Sanjay Khan calling from Bombay. She was giving a shot and could not answer his call. At 4.30, he called again, and demanded she come on the line.

‘This was the fateful call which began the sequence of ugly events.

‘Sanjay, on the spur of the moment, wanted dates to reshoot an antra of a song which had already been shot. Abdullah was complete; the dubbing of the entire film was done; but Sanjay being Sanjay Khan decided that he wished to reshoot and demanded four days in which to go to Jaisalmer and redo a two-minute scene.

‘Zeenat, on her side, pleaded that she had given fixed dates long ago to B R Chopra and Tony-Tito for the shooting of their films; and, she was heard doing so by Sybil (production man), Kumar (writer of Insaaf Ka Tarazoo) and Deepak Parashar.

‘But Sanjay was adamant. He accused her of having an affair with BR and Deepak Parashar; and people around her heard Zeenat, halt in tears, telling Sanjay: “How can you think I’m sleeping with them? How can you even say such things? You know I love you and throughout our relationship I have been clean!’

‘It was a half hour call and little did Zeenat know what was to follow. She went up to B R Chopra and asked his permission to leave Lonavla and the night shooting stint because she had date problems with Abbas (Sanjay Khan’s real nme). She did not have to explain herself because all had heard the turbulent conversation.

‘At 5.30 pm, Zeenat left Lonavla with Flory, her hairdresser. She went straight to Sanjay House to work out the shooting dates. He was not home. She was informed he was at the Taj.

‘At 9.30 pm, she entered the Taj and asked the receptionist it she had seen Sanjay Khan at the hotel. She was informed that he was attending a private party given by Mr Kamal Sidiqi in the Neptune Suite.

‘She went upstairs with Flory and asked the steward standing outside the suite to please call Mr Sidiqi out.

‘The steward, Raja, obliged, not realising the horrific scene that was to follow. Zeenat told Mr Sidiqi that she did not want to break up the party, but would like to speak to Abbas for a few minutes.

‘He would not hear of this and insisted that Miss Aman join the party. He threw open the door and Zeenat entered. The atmosphere suddenly turned cold and menacing. Even the steward could feel the tension mounting. All conversation had stopped.

‘Parmeshwar Godrej, Faridé and Papuli (Sanjay’s cousins) looked stunned. Sanjay stood with a glass in his hand; high and swaying, demanding, “Why have you come here?”

‘Zarine too had an ugly look on her face.

‘At 9.45 pm, Zeenat asked Sanjay if she could speak to him privately. She only wished to settle her shooting dates as she had to report back to Lonavla.

‘Sanjay followed by Zeenat, walked into the adjoining room (which had a connecting door). And it was there that he let loose his animal wrath.

‘He did not give Zeenat a second to speak. He exhausted the vocabulary of smut on her. He used the most vulgar of abuse, called her a w****, a b****.

‘Accused her of sleeping (to put it mildly) with his brother Feroz Khan amongst several other men. If he had just slapped her hard a few times, one could have excused him.

‘But what followed was one of the most brutal bash-ups any hotel staff could have witnessed.

‘He hit her. She fell. He lifted her by the hair and hit her again. And again and again! One could only hear her wails.’

‘The reportage is accurate’

Though Zeenat Aman did not confirm or comment on this post, she posted a ‘like’ on it.

Shobhaa De commented on Pillai’s post, stating: ‘Finally! Thanks Jitesh, for bravely breaching the carefully constructed wall of silence around this shameful incident. The reportage is accurate. Nobody can dispute its veracity. Not even Zeenat.’

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta also reacted, writing, ‘Most despicable and criminal behaviour. What is worse and even more criminal is the attempt to whitewash this abuse by denying it blatantly.’

‘I was advised by numerous friends to counter-attack and present my side of the story, but I felt it was beneath my dignity’

Sanjay Khan had once addressed this episode in his autobiography, The Best Mistakes of My Life.

A short excerpt from the book, where he explains himself:

‘The events during the making of Abdullah, and the subsequent wanton attacks of the media isolated me even from my own family, both in the final stages of filming and after the release.

‘The burden of anguish borne by my wife and children during those excruciatingly painful days left a deep scar on my psyche which is difficult to describe.

‘I was advised by numerous friends to counter-attack and present my side of the story, but I felt it was beneath my dignity. I went into a period of deep introspection, which prevented me from making my own films as well as accepting any offered to me by other producers.

‘By the time I came out of this period of self-exile, almost four years had passed without my having done any work.

‘I realised that I had to find the will to reclaim my life, so I dug deep, my school teacher’s homily echoing in my mind: ‘Handsome is as handsome does.’

‘Somehow, this call to action gave me the motivation to return to creativity, and I began work on a new film, Kala Dhanda Goray Log (1986). Besides writing the screenplay, I produced, directed and starred in it.’

Photographs curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff