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‘Amitabh Bachchan almost died due to doctor’s negligence’: Puneet Issar recalls Coolie accident, says Big B asked him to ‘hit him, timing went off’

Amitabh Bachchan faced a near-fatal blow on the set of Coolie by the hands of Puneet Issar.

Amitabh Bachchan survived a near-fatal accident on the set of Coolie.

Amitabh Bachchan was left fighting for his life after he got injured on the sets of Coolie in 1982. Puneet Issar, who was his co-actor in the action scene, was the one who hit him accidentally during the scene and before anyone could realise, the blow ended up being near-fatal. In a recent interview, Puneet recalled that incident and shared that when he was rehearsing the action scene with Amitabh, the actor told him to touch him while throwing the punch so it doesn’t look fake but somehow, the timing of the choreography of the scene got messed up and Amitabh was injured. He also implied that there was some negligence by the doctors as Bachchan’s injury went from bad to worse.

In a chat with Siddharth Kannan on his YouTube channel, Puneet shared that this was his first day on the set of Coolie with Amitabh. He shared that while they were rehearsing the fight, they realised that they could throw fake punches at each other while filming from certain angles but when they were taking the shot from their profile, it was not possible to cheat the shot, and so, Bachchan told him to touch him slightly so it doesn’t look fake.

“It was a sequence where I was supposed to hit Mr Bachchan, where he was supposed to throw some punches, and there was a camera angle where I was supposed to catch him and throw him against the board and then catch him and throw him on the table,” he recalled and added, “During the rehearsal, it was visible that I was not touching him so Amit ji said that you can touch me because I will back off anyway. When I banged him against the board, it was reflex action that he came forward and the timing got screwed and I hit him. It was just an accident.”

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Puneet said that things went from “bad to worse” at a rather quick pace. “It was negligence on the part of the doctors because they couldn’t diagnose what was wrong with him, that his intestine was ruptured. If it was just a regular intestine rupture, they could have repaired it but it went from bad to worse,” he said. Amitabh Bachchan was shooting in Bengaluru when the accident happened but his situation got much worse and he was transported to Mumbai via a plane. Soon after the accident, he was declared technically dead for a few moments until he regained is consciousness.

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