Jaya Bachchan was very ‘gracious’ with Puneet Issar after he accidentally injured Amitabh Bachchan on Coolie set: ‘I had tears in my eyes’

After the unfortunate accident that happened with Amitabh Bachchan on the sets of the film Coolie in 1982, Puneet Issar, his co-actor who unintentionally caused the near-fatal blow, was being villainised by Amitabh’s fans. During this time, Bachchan was in a fragile state in the hospital, but he went out of his way to protect Puneet from the blame that was being hurled at him. In a recent interview, Puneet recalled how Amitabh and Jaya Bachchan were both extremely gracious after the incident and never blamed Puneet for it.

In a chat with Siddharth Kannan, Puneet recalled that Amitabh requested to meet him in the hospital, which left him with tears in his eyes. “Mr Bachchan called me, he said, ‘I want to meet Puneet’. I went to meet him and when I saw him in that state, I had tears in my eyes, thinking that all this has happened because of me. He told me, ‘Puneet, it’s not your fault. When we are doing action, this kind of stuff happens’,” he recalled. In the same chat, he also spoke about Jaya Bachchan’s reaction to the entire episode and said that she was very “gracious” through it all. “Amazing, what a lady,” he said and added, “They are associated with films. They know that it is not anyone’s fault, it just happened.” He insisted that Jaya was very “supportive” and “gracious” through the entire episode.

Puneet recalled that Amitabh shared an incident with him where he had unintentionally injured Vinod Khanna, who had to get stitches on his chin. “He said, ‘I was feeling the same way you are feeling today, so please relax’.” Puneet shared that even though Amitabh was in a delicate state, he dropped him to the hospital gate so the press could see that there was no bad blood between them.

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“In that state, he got up, put his arm around my neck and took me the gate of Breach Candy, where the press was stationed and dropped me until there so people don’t think that he has any hard feelings towards Puneet. That’s the greatness of Bachchan saab,” he recalled.