VJ-turned-actress Mahima Chaudhry – who made an impressive debut in Bollywood with Subhash Ghai’s Pardes (1997) opposite Shah Rukh Khan – in a recent interview, has accused Ghai of bullying her. She also claimed that Ghai sent messages to fellow filmmakers telling them not to work with her, and she lost out on several projects because of it, which caused her great stress.
In fact, Mahima also revealed that the only four people who stood by her during this phase were Sanjay Dutt, Salman Khan, David Dhawan and Rajkumar Santoshi. She also shared that Ram Gopal Varma had replaced her in Satya (1998) with Urmila Matondkar without informing her.
Reacting to the accusations made against him, Ghai shared that he was “amused” by it. “Mahima and I are very good friends till date and are still in touch through messages. She is a very nice and mature woman of today,” he said in a statement.
And while he agrees that there was a conflict post the release of the film Pardes – that even fetched her the Filmfare Award for Best Actress – he says that it was amicably solved when she later apologised to him in the presence of her parents. He says, “My company did send her a show cause notice for flouting a clause in our agreement. The industry reacted in a big way and so I withdrew and cancelled her contract with Mukta Arts. After 3 years she came to me with her family and apologised for her impulsive reaction. I forgave her and thereafter we became friends again.”