Known as one of the most stunning actresses of all time, Zeenat Aman has always been a picture of elegance. So when Zeenat’s eye was damaged in an alleged assault by actor Sanjay Khan in 1979, it created a stir in the Hindi film industry. At that time, it was Sanjay Married to Zareen Khan He was allegedly having an affair with fellow star Abdullah Zeenat. In a new interview, photographer Jayesh Sheth indicated that Zeenat took a group of photos after her eye was damaged and she pretended like a woman seeking revenge.
In a conversation on The Pooja Bhatt Show podcast, Jayesh shared that he went to shoot some on the sets of Abdullah with Sanjay and Zeenat when they had a “strong love affair”. He recalled that at that time, they were shooting for the song ‘Maine Poochha Chand Se’ at RK Studios and while Sanjay was shooting comfortably, Zeenat objected. “Please don’t post these pictures, they are personal,” she said. I said, “Zeenat ji, please, these pictures are very nice. I ask if I can post please. She said, ‘Post one or two pictures but I will choose any one of them,'” he recalled and added that the pictures were very well liked and he developed a friendship with Zeenat after that.
Jayesh recalls that some time after that, there was “the Taj Mahal incident,” in which “her eye was damaged.” “When she recovered, we organized a photo shoot with this little swelling and her damaged eye. I can’t forget that photo because she was like a tigress. Her hair was open, she was backlit and she was striking pose after pose in retaliation. Killer shots.”
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He added that they used very little make-up but even then it was clear that her eyes were puffy. He added: “And when the pictures came, you couldn’t believe it because even with the damaged eye that was slightly touched up with make-up, it still showed. And everyone loved the pictures.”
Zeenat previously spoke about this incident in a conversation with Simi Garewal, but she did not mention the name of her attacker. “For many years, it was blurred in my mind because I think that’s what the human mind does. When something is obviously unpleasant, you close your mind off of it and pretend it never happened and promise yourself it will never happen again. And that’s how you deal with it,” she said.
Sanjay Khan, while promoting his memoir, The Best Mistakes of My Life, spoke about the incident in a conversation with Hrishikesh Kannan and He said it was a public relations attack. “I was extremely hurt and horrified by the one-sidedness of the entire story because no one even asked me what happened. This was a well-planned PR attack against me that came as a blitzkrieg,” he claimed.
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Sanjay added, “I’ve even been accused of having her eye go out… She’s losing her eye and that’s not true. If you watch films of 81, 82, 83, 84, she did many films. There is evidence of the fact that she has perfect eyes. Later in her life she became a little cross-eyed because her mother was a little cross-eyed. It was a genetic thing that was described to me that I slapped her, and I never slapped her, and that was blasphemy.” He claimed to have met her the next day after the supposed incident and claimed she was “perfectly fine.”
(Tags for translation)Zeenat Aman
