After Aishwarya Rai was injured in a major accident on the sets of Khakee in Nashik, Amitabh Bachchan arranged for Anil Ambani’s private plane to fly her back to Mumbai.
Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai
Before Aishwarya Rai married Abhishek Bachchan in 2007, she appeared alongside his father, Amitabh Bachchan, in the 2004 action thriller Khakee, directed by Rajkumar Santoshi. The film also featured Ajay Devgn, Akshay Kumar, Tusshar Kapoor, and Atul Kulkarni in prominent roles. While filming in Nashik, Aishwarya had a major accident on the sets, and Amitabh arranged for a private plane from Anil Ambani to fly her back to Mumbai.
In an interview with Rediff in 2003, Amitabh recalled the entire incident. The Deewaar actor said, “We were shooting for Rajkumar Santoshi’s Khakee on the road outside Nashik. The stuntman drove too fast, at 60, 70 kilometres per hour, and skidded. All of us jumped out of the way. But Aishwarya and Tusshar Kapoor couldn’t move fast enough. The car slammed into her chair. It was terrifying. The car hit her and took her down a crevice and slammed into a cactus plant.”
“Akshay Kumar pulled the car out and extricated her. We rushed her to hospital. We had to go through terrible crowd management problems. I have gone through this ‘VIP syndrome’ before. Thank God the hospital and doctor were very good. The commissioner of police in Nashik organised everything”, he continued.
Sharing how Anil Ambani came to their rescue, Big B stated, “I asked Aishwarya’s mother if she wanted to take her daughter back to Mumbai. We organised Anil Ambani’s private plane. Since there is no night landing facility in Nashik, we had to take permission from Delhi to land the plane at the military base which is 45 minutes away from the hospital. The seats had to be removed from the aircraft.”
Slamming the media portals for reporting the accident as a trivial incident, Bachchan concluded, “And everyone is brushing it off as a small incident blown out of proportion. For two nights I couldn’t sleep. To see this happen in front of my eyes! Her back was lacerated with cactus thorns. The bone in the rear portion of her feet is broken. She suffered severe cuts. And her injury was reported as trivial.”
Khakee was both a commercial and critical success. The film is still recalled for its surprising twist in the pre-climax, where Aishwarya is revealed to be the girlfriend of the villain, played by Ajay, and is aiding him as a double agent against the police officers portrayed by Amitabh, Akshay, and Tusshar.
