‘Rajesh Khanna won’t marry you; he’s a suspicious man’: Sanjeev Kumar warned Anju Mahendru that he would ruin her life

Sanjeev Kumar reportedly warned Anju Mahendru that Rajesh Khanna wouldn't marry her, and told her to be careful of him.

New Delhi | Updated: October 17, 2025 12:58 PM IST

3 min read

Rajesh Khanna was in a relationship with Anju Mahendru before he married Dimple Kapadia. (Express Archive)

Rajesh Khanna famously took his baraat past former partner Anju Mahendru’s house on his way to marry Dimple Kapadia, who was half his age at the time. According to her friends, Anju wasn’t distraught about the breakup of her relationship, which had been tumultuous. But none other than Sanjeev Kumar had once warned her to be careful of Rajesh, whom he described as a suspicious man. He told Anju that Rajesh wouldn’t marry her. They were old friends, and he always looked out for her, his niece Jigna and his biographer Hanif Zaveri said in a new interview.

They told Vickey Lalwani, “According to Anju, when she was seeing Rajesh Khanna, Sanjeev Kumar had already warned her about him. He said, ‘Yeh aadmi shakki hai, iske saath kisi ki life nahi chal sakti (He’s a suspicious man, nobody can live with him)’. Sanjeev ji had said this to Anju Mahendru. He told her, ‘You won’t have a happy life if you marry him’.” Asked how Anju reacted to this warning, Hanif Zaveri recalled his interview with her, and said, “She told me that Rajesh Khanna suspected her of having an affair with Sanjeev Kumar. This is why they never saw eye-to-eye.”

Also read – Rajesh Khanna had the ‘arrogance of Napoleon’, his house was furnished as ‘a temple to himself’: When BBC journalist witnessed Kaka’s fall

He also recalled what filmmaker J Om Prakash said about casting both stars in the film. “He was warned by at least 20 people in the industry that he was making a big mistake by casting Sanjeev Kumar and Rajesh Khanna in the same film together, because it would never be completed. In fact, Hrishikesh Mukherjee first offered Anand to Sanjeev Kumar, but Rajesh Khanna forced the director to replace him. He was fine with Amitabh Bachchan, but he underestimated him, and it backfired,” he said.

In an earlier interview with Vickey Lalwani, actor Mumtaz recalled her friend Anju’s relationship with Rajesh, and said that he would probably still be alive had he married her. “Even today, I’d say that Kaka might have still bee alive had he stayed with Anju. She looked after him like he was a flower. Even when he was ill, she always used to be in the bungalow. She always used to look after him, his food, his ‘dawai-daaru’. She was a wonderful person. But you can’t escape destiny,” she said.

In a 1987 interview with SCREEN, Anju spoke about the emotional ups and downs she experienced during her time with Rajesh, and said, “Basically he is a very orthodox man, yet somehow he always gets attracted to ultra modern girls. I know it’s a contradiction, but then Rajesh Khanna is like that. Confusion was a part of our relationship. If I wore a skirt, he’d snap, why don’t you wear a saree? If I wore a saree, he’d wrinkle his nose and say, why are you trying to project a Bhartiya nari look?’” He died in 2012, and Sanjeev Kumar died at the age of 47 in 1985.

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