‘Heinous’ Pooja Bhatt was ‘abusive’ on the set of Dhokha, alleges Muzammil Ibrahim: ‘She compared John Abraham, Dino Morea to dogs’

In a recent interview, actor Muzammil Ibrahim revealed that he was mistreated and verbally abused by Pooja Bhatt on the sets of their 2007 film Dhokha.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | Updated: June 6, 2025 09:21 AM IST

4 min read

Muzammil Ibrahim says Pooja Bhatt was abusive on the set of Dhokha. (Photo: Instagram/Pooja Bhatt/Muzammil Ibrahim)

In the mid 2000s, actor Pooja Bhatt tried to establish herself as a director with films like Paap, Dhokha and Jism 2. All these films were produced under her father Mahesh Bhatt’s banner but none of them made a mark in the cultural zeitgeist. In this phase, actor Muzammil Ibrahim made his debut with Pooja Bhatt in her film Dhokha but it ended up being an unsavoury experience for him. In a recent chat, Muzammil accused Pooja of being verbally abusive on set, and said that she mistreated him on various occasions. He said that the situation got so bad that he would have nightmares.

In a chat with Siddharth Kannan, Muzammil said that he was called “unprofessional” and the Bhatts planted various stories against him in the media. “I was called unprofessional at that time by Pooja Bhatt. She had a temperament, an attitude which was very disrespectful for actors,” he said and added that despite Pooja’s attitude, Mahesh Bhatt was very supportive towards him. Muzammil said that he was just 20 at the time and the way he was being treated by 35-year-old Pooja was “heinous.” When asked if he got along with Pooja at any point, Muzammil declared that it never happened and added that he had expectations from the production as this was his debut film, and he had been a supermodel before this. “When you mistreat a kid like that… you lose all expectations,” he said.

Muzammil was asked about his experience with mistreatment and he accused Pooja of abusing a lot on set. “She used to verbally abuse a lot,” he said. The actor claimed that despite all of this, Mahesh Bhatt offered him Raaz 2, and even his wife, Soni Razdan, wanted to make a film with him but “I refused to do both these films because i was so scared. I had nightmares.” He shared that Pooja’s behaviour worsened when Mahesh was not on set, and he also implied that it wasn’t Pooja, but Mahesh, who directed the film. “Bhatt saab saw what was happening and tried to tell Pooja to not behave in this way. Pooja wasn’t even directing, Bhatt saab used to direct. She would do songs and Bhatt saab wouldn’t be on set during the songs. Things would escalate when Bhatt saab wasn’t present on set,” he said.

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He alleged that Pooja had previously compared like John Abraham and Dino Morea to dogs and said, “Pooja has told actors in the past that they are like dogs, when I tell them to sit, they should sit, if I tell them to stand they should stand. She would say this about John and Dino. Someone who has this kind of attitude about their actors, imagine what kind of a person they would be.”

Muzammil said that he didn’t dare to fight with the Bhatts because he was “scared” of them. “I could see they were getting press to sabotage me. I knew where all of this was coming from so I was scared,” he said and added that he was slipping into depression and would have “nightmares” because of this experience.

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