When Shah Rukh Khan got ‘sh*t scared’ of gangster Abu Salem’s calls: ‘I’m not macho enough, it was depressing and scary’

The 1990s was a scary time for Bollywood. The rising threat of the underworld was upon the film industry. The film folks were on high alert after Gulshan Kumar was shot dead in 1997 and producer Rajiv Rai was attacked. It was in this era that the biggest stars were getting threatening calls from the mafia and Shah Rukh Khan, who was a reigning superstar at the time, was one of them. Anupama Chopra’s book, King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema, details this particular incident.
Shah Rukh was at the height of his stardom in the 1990s. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge had changed his fortune and he was now the man who was ruling Bollywood. During that phase, Rakesh Maria, who was a senior police officer at the time, called director Mahesh Bhatt with an urgent concern. They had received word that Abu Salem was “going to kill Shah Rukh Khan.” Salem was the mastermind behind Gulshan Kumar’s shooting and was known for extorting money from film producers. As per the information received the police, Abu Salem was targeting SRK because the actor had refused a film being made Salem’s producer friend. SRK, at this point, had never received any calls from the underworld. As soon as Mahesh got to know, he called the DDLJ star and took him to Rakesh Maria’s office. The star was soon surrounded security.
His wife Gauri Khan and his children were also advised to stay indoors because of the threats. During this time, SRK and Gauri were attending the wedding of a cricketer when a fan pulled out a pen from his pocket to ask for Shah Rukh’s autograph but the actor was so worried for his wife’s safety that he pushed her away.

Shah Rukh was shooting for Yash Chopra’s Dil To Pagal Hai at the time and one day, he got a call from Abu Salem. The book details their conversation as Salem asked the film star “Haan, kya chal raha hai? (What’s going on?)” SRK responded, “Who’s this?” Salem wasn’t happy with this question and started abusing the actor.
When SRK asked the gangster, “What is the problem, sir?,” Salem said that he wasn’t happy that Shah Rukh had refused to work with a Muslim filmmaker. The gangster said that he expected Shah Rukh to support those who come from the same community as him. At the time, Shah Rukh Khan happened to be working with a few Muslim filmmakers – Mansoor Khan, Abbas Mustan, Aziz Mirza – and mentioned the same to Salem. Salem then said, “Log bolte the tu bahut proudy hai lekin tu bada sharif hai. Abhi police ki zaroorat nahin tereko. Main nahin maroonga (People tell me that you are very proud but you are a decent man. Now you don’t need the police. I won’t kill you.)”
After DDLJ, Shah Rukh Khan was the biggest star in Hindi cinema.
Even though the gangster had said that he won’t kill Shh Rukh, his security remained just as tight. Salem started calling SRK very frequently but now his calls were to extract information about others. He would often tell the Chak De India star that he knew all about his whereabouts. “He would tell me that he could see me,” Shah Rukh recalled. “It was like living under a telescope. It was very depressing and very scary,” he said. As advised Rakesh Maria, Shah Rukh was supposed to be polite, not take any information, and not give out any information either. These frequent conversations were quite scary for the Yes Boss actor. “I’m not macho enough to turn around and say that I wasn’t scared of any of these guys. I was s**t scared,” he said.
Salem’s calls never had him asking Shah Rukh Khan for any money but he would frequently advise the star as to what films he should be doing. SRK would refuse his suggestions politely saying, “I told him, I don’t tell you who to shoot so don’t tell me which film to do.”

After months of living with many security guards, Shah Rukh Khan put a stop to this. “I got very durbed. Our house was small, my son was young, and their socks used to smell. It was just claustrophobic.” He hired a private security guard and bought himself a bulletproof car. He, in fact, joked, “Nobody is going to kill me. I’m an international treasure now.”
Shah Rukh said that through all of this, he somehow believed that he would not get shot, even though many in the film industry were being targeted. “I had this strange misplaced confidence that I will not get shot,” he told Chopra.