Pankaj Tripathi says he was arrested, beaten up by cops during his student days in Patna: ‘Gave up the idea of joining politics after that’

Pankaj Tripathi recalled the time when he was arrested and beaten up by cops during his student days in Patna.

New Delhi | January 9, 2024 09:23 PM IST

2 min read

Pankaj Tripathi opened up about his arrest in Patna.

Pankaj Tripathi, who will soon be seen in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s biopic Main Atal Hoon, recently opened up about the time when he had an inclination towards politics but was discouraged after he was arrested and beaten up by cops. In a recent interview, Pankaj was speaking of his college days in Bihar when he was a part of ABVP. “Everyone is a politician in Bihar,” the actor said as he spoke about the interest in politics in his home state.

When asked if Pankaj thought about joining politics at the time, the actor said that he wanted to pursue this career but after he was arrested once, he let go of that idea. “I never thought about entering politics at that time. There was a thought that I might proceed in this line but then there was an arrest and the cops beat me up so I left that thought there and then,” he shared with ANI.

Pankaj Tripathi said that it was right around this time that he started getting interested in theatre and decided to continue on that path. “It was at that point in my life that I had started getting interested in theatre and it attracted me so much more,” he said.

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In a 2019 interview with PTI, Pankaj had shared that he spent a week in Beur jail in Patna and that experience completely changed his life. “You don’t have anything to do in jail. No meetings, no cooking, not doing anything. You are completely alone. When a man is extremely lonely, he starts discovering himself. I met myself in those seven days. When I started reading Hindi literature, I realised how alienated I was to this world. That completely changed me,” he said.

In 2023, Pankaj Tripathi was honoured with his second National Film Award for his work in Laxman Utekar’s Mimi. After Main Atal Hoon, he is looking forward to the release of Mirzapur Season 3 on Amazon Prime Video.

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