Happy Birthday Preity Zinta! The Actor Who Testified In Court Against Underworld

In an interview sometime back, Preity Zinta had opened up about her encounter with the underworld and how it had affected her.

Picture Courtesy: @realpz/Instagram

New Delhi: Actor Preity Zinta turned 47 on Monday. She lives in the United States with her husband Gene Goodenough and their twins.

The co-owner of IPL team Kings XI Punjab is known as a bubbly person, much like most of the characters she played on screen. 

Sometime back, she had opened up about her encounter with the underworld and how it had affected her. She had described the experience when she testified against gangsters in the court. Speaking about the incident at the India Today Conclave East 2018, Preity revealed that during the shooting of her 2001 film ‘Chori Chori Chupke Chupke’, she had received calls asking for 50 lakh rupees and she reported this to the court.

While talking about the incident, Preity described it as ‘scary’. Other Bollywood celebrities including Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Rakesh Roshan, Mahesh Manjrekar and others also received similar extortion calls. However, they retracted their statements before appearing in court, as per a Hindustan Times report. 

Furthermore, Chori Chori Chupke Chupke’s producer Nazim Rizvi along with the financier Bharat Shah were charged with making the film with the money that came from underworld gangster Chhota Shakeel.

The film starred Preity Zinta alongside Salman Khan and Rani Mukerji and was directed by Abbas-Mustan. The release was delayed by several months as CBI investigations were underway.

Preity said, “For the record, if I knew that everyone was going to back out, I also would have. It was a scary time in my life. I should have been protected. Whatever I said in court was on TV ten minutes later.” She even said how everyone on the sets of her film Chori Chori Chupke Chupke was ‘paranoid’ about the threat calls and revealed that she dealt with it in her own way.

She was amongst the few who stood against the gangster and testified. She said she couldn’t take it anymore when the gangsters became abusive. “I was fine till they were scaring me, but once they started abusing, I lost it. I can take stress, but not people abusing me. I learnt that if you get a call from +92, don't pick up! Luckily I was famous. Had I not been, it would've been tough.”

Preity even revealed her reason why she decided to testify in court when others backed out. Preity said, “I didn't have a family, I didn't have children.”

The actress is now residing in the United States with husband Gene Goodenough and welcomed twins via surrogacy in November last year.

 

Preity Zinda made her Bollywood debut in 1998 with Mani Ratnam's 'Dil Se' in a supporting role but was able to grab attention for her looks and scintillating dance moves in the song 'Jiya Jale'. She later featured that year in the commercially succesful film 'Soldier', opposite Bobby Deol.

The actress has a lot of succesful hits to her credit including 'Kal Ho Naa Ho', 'Veer-Zaara' and 'Janemann'.