Sanjay Dutt served jail term in 2013 for illegal possession of arms related to the 1993 Mumbai blasts case.
Despite having worked on only two films, Sanjay Dutt and Apoorva Lakhia share a rather strong bond.
Despite having worked on only two films, Sanjay Dutt and Apoorva Lakhia share a strong bond, according to the filmmaker. Apoorva mentioned that Sanjay showed great commitment in completing his work in 2013 before returning to jail. The actor even recorded lines for the Zanjeer remake at home before serving his sentence for illegal possession of arms related to the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.
Ram Charan marked his entry into Bollywood with the remake of Zanjeer. In the film, the Telugu actor took on the role of ACP Vijay Khanna, originally played by megastar Amitabh Bachchan, while Sanjay played the character of Sher Khan in the Hindi version. The role of Sher Khan was made famous by veteran actor Pran in the original film that released in 1973. Apoorva shared that Sanjay personally reached out to him and said he wanted to complete the dubbing for Zanjeer before serving his jail sentence.
During a chat with Siddharth Kannan, Apoorva shared, “Sanju sir is amazing. He was going to jail the next day, and he hadn’t completed the dubbing for Zanjeer. He was going to be picked up by the cops at 1:30 the next day, and he called me and said, ‘Bro, I’m really sorry I haven’t done your dubbing. Come to my house tonight and do my dubbing’.”
Apoorva visited his house and Sanjay cleared out the entire bar area to make room. “I took my technician. He dubbed for the whole film on a phone. And he was going to jail at 1 in the afternoon. That is the bonding,” the filmmaker added.
The 2013 version of Zanjeer featured Priyanka Chopra, Prakash Raj, Atul Kulkarni and Mahie Gill in lead roles. It was released in Telugu as Thoofan, with actor Srihari portraying the role of Sher Khan. Apoorva’s most recent project is the web series Crackdown 2, which is currently available for streaming on Jio Cinema.
