How ‘Kaho Naa … Pyaar Hai’ made Rakesh Roshan a mafia target

Mumbai : At a time when the 1997 killing of music mogul Gulshan Kumar was still fresh in public memory, actor and filmmaker Rakesh Roshan was confronted by two sharpshooters in full public view and shot twice on January 21, 2000.
He had just made ‘Kaho Naa … Pyaar Hai’, which turned out to be superhit and launched the career of his son, Hrithik Roshan . Recounting the incident soon after it took place, Hrithik, who was in London shooting for ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham’, said in an interview with the American-British comedian and TV personality Ruby Wax: “My father was in debt because we had borrowed a lot of money to make the film. The film struck big time — it was the biggest hit in the past five-six years.” The moment the underworld got a whiff of this Bollywood success story, they could smell money — and Rakesh Roshan became their prime target.
On the evening of January 21, 2000, the filmmaker was shot at by two unidentified assailants near his office on Tilak Road at Santacruz West in Mumbai.
Of the two bullets aimed at him, one hit him on the left arm and the other grazed his chest. As Rakesh Roshan fell on the ground next to him, the two assailants fled the scene.
The filmmaker was quick to recover. He got into his car and his driver Aatish sped him to the Santacruz police station. The police then accompanied him to Nanavati Hospital, where Dr Sharad Pandey, father of Bollywood actor Chunky Pandey, successfully operated on him for an hour to remove the bullet.