‘Shoot me if you want to’, Shah Rukh Khan told the underworld as he refused to bow down to pressure; Sanjay Gupta recalls anecdote

Taking to Twitter, Gupta recalled the time when Shah Rukh Khan faced threats from the underworld and recounted the story of how King Khan courageously held his ground. “Back in the 90’s when the underworld bullying of film stars was at its peak, Shah Rukh Khan was THE ONLY star who never gave in. ‘Goli marni hai mar do, par tumhaare liye kaam nahin karoonga. Main Pathan hoon (shoot me if you want to, but I won’t work for you, I am a Pathaan),’ he said. He’s the same today (sic),” Gupta noted.

Shah Rukh Khan’s encounters with underworld dons

In her book ‘King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema’, film critic Anupama Chopra too explored SRK’s encounters with the underworld, especially dons Abu Salem, Chhota Rajan and Chhota Shakeel.

Fans of actor Shah Rukh Khan wear his masks from Jawan at a cinema hall, in Kolkata, Sept. 7, 2023. (PTI)

Chopra detailed in her book that the tensions began in 1997, during SRK’s work on Mahesh Bhatt’s Duplicate. It was Rakesh Maria, a senior police officer in Maharashtra known for cracking the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, who alerted Bhatt to the potential threat to SRK’s life. Subsequently, SRK was provided with a personal bodyguard.

Chopra recounted an incident where SRK received a call directly from Abu Salem, who hurled verbal abuses at him for refusing to do a film with a producer close to the don. Despite feeling “depressed and scared”, Shah Rukh maintained his composure and engaged in a rational conversation to defuse the tension. Whenever Salem persistently pushed him to accept a particular film, Shah Rukh, as per Chopra, responded saying, “I don’t tell you who to shoot so don’t tell me which film to do.”

Chopra observed that the Chhota Rajan gang’s response was unexpectedly respectful, while Chhota Shakeel took offence to the line “Paun jannat tale” in the song “Chaiyya Chaiyya” from the movie “Dil Se.” However, the actor cleverly convinced Shakeel that the phrase didn’t mean “heaven is beneath my feet” but rather “my feet are going to heaven.”

According to a report by Mathrubhumi, SRK mentioned in the book that his primary concern wasn’t so much for his own life but rather for the safety of his wife and children. He was quoted as saying, “I had this strange misplaced confidence that I will not get shot.”

Chopra highlighted three factors that played to SRK’s advantage: he was polite without fail; the gangsters and he were followers of the same religion; and his mass popularity. In fact, SRK’s fan base even extended to the family members of the gangsters who were issuing threats. Abu Salem, for instance, informed SRK that both his mother and wife were ardent fans of the actor.

In 2014, SRK was provided with additional police security after a heightened level of threat perception to his life from the underworld. The additional police security deployment came after film producer Aly Morani allegedly received threats from underworld don Ravi Pujari.