Actor Mahesh Thakur has opened up about the discomforting time when five cast members of Hum Saath-Saath Hain — Salman Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Neelam Kothari, Tabu, and Sonali Bendre — were taken into police custody for their alleged involvement in the controversial black buck case in the late 1990s. The police came to the film’s set in Rajasthan, and took the five actors with them, he said.
Mahesh Thakur, who was a part of the Sooraj Barjatya family drama, said that he feels “very bad” when he recalls what happened, as the media was feasting on the incident, which made headlines because of involvement of big stars. He told Siddharth Kannan in an interview, “We were filming a song when the cops showed up on set, picked up everybody and took them to the station. Neither me, Mohnish Bahl nor Karisma Kapoor was involved. We three were not involved. Only the five of them. It was not a good thing what we saw and experienced. But thankfully all that is in the past now and we have moved on. The women were let go, but I think Salman bhai was there overnight with the cops. Then his family came–Arbaaz and Sohail. Salman was okay the next day. He is a cool dude, he was fine. Even Saif.”
He continued, “Because it was so ambiguous, news waalo ne kaafi uchchale hai, kuch nikala toh nahi tha (The media blew it up). People were hyping it because Salman and Saif’s names were associated, so the media enjoyed it. But the fact is nothing came out at the end of it, but the media fed a lot of negativity.” The actor said that when the incident happened, the Jodhpur schedule got cancelled and the entire cast was sent back. When they re-grouped shortly afterwards, the atmosphere hadn’t really changed much, Mahesh said. “It was normal. Everyone knew everyone, it wasn’t that aapne kiya hai questioning. The professionalism was displayed easily.”
Mahesh recalled that the eight days of buffer that Sooraj Barjatya had pre-scheduled worked in the film’s favour. “Sooraj ji had taken eight extra days from us, apart from the 99 days of shoot. He said he would finish our shoot in 99 days. When the case happened, the eight extra days worked in the favour of the film because they were all combination dates. So we used those buffer eight days to shoot, otherwise getting dates from everyone and shooting it would have been very difficult,” he said.
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