Shah Rukh Khan, Dilip Kumar, Mithun were all in Dubai during ’93 Mumbai blasts, for a cricket match: ‘SRK wanted to stay there for a few days’, says actor Akashdeep Sabir | Bollywood News

The 1993 Mumbai blasts still cast a dark shadow over the city’s hory. In a recent interview, actor Akashdeep Sabir recalled that many Hindi movie stars were not even in the city when the tragedy happened. He shared that stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Dilip Kumar, Raj Babbar, Mithun Chakraborty were all in Dubai for a celebrity cricket match at the time. Recalling that the event was a bust as people refused to attend, he shared that Shah Rukh stayed in Dubai for a couple of days after the match.
Akashdeep told Lehren Retro, “This was the ’93 Bombay blasts so it became an issue when… we were scheduled to have this match and we were expecting a full house because we had every leading actor from Dilip saab to Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, everybody was there playing the match. And because of this issue, I believe, there was an announcement in Dubai that nobody will go for the match.”
Akashdeep said that Dilip Kumar tried to make requests so people would come and attend but it didn’t materialise. “Unfortunately, nobody came and we still had to have the match. It got the promoter into such dire straits that the next morning he said, ‘Guys, time to vacate. Get earlier flights and leave because I have lost everything. I can’t afford to let people stay for another day’,” he said. Akashdeep said that Shah Rukh was accompanied his wife Gauri Khan and they wanted to stay there for a couple of more days. Sheeba, who was also a leading actor at the time, and is now married to Akashdeep, offered her house to the couple.
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Akashdeep said that Shah Rukh was on the verge of stardom at the time. “It was during this time that Baazigar had released. It had not yet become what it is today, a cult film,” he said. Baazigar was released in November 1993 and the bomb blasts happened in March. He added that Shah Rukh wanted to stay in the city for a few days and that’s when Sheeba stepped in and offered her apartment. “Sheeba said, ‘I have a lovely apartment across the lake, you can come and stay there’. He was more than sweet. She had a massive 4-5 bedroom house,” he said. Sheeba mentioned that Shah Rukh was a “lovely” guest.
In the same chat, Akashdeep said that he owned the copyright for the title ‘Dunki’ and that he handed it over to Shah Rukh for free. Shah Rukh will next be seen in King, directed Siddharth Anand. The film also stars Suhana Khan and Abhishek Bachchan.