The turbulent relationship between actresses Aditya Pancholi and Pooja Bedi, which made headlines in the late 1990s, is back in the news. During a rough patch in Pancholi’s marriage to Zarina Wahab, their affair grew. Bedi, who was head over heels in love, talked about their relationship in magazine articles at the time. But their love story came to an end suddenly in the middle of bitter accusations.
Things became worse when Pooja Bedi said that Pancholi raped her underage maid. Reports say that Bedi filed a complaint, but both Pancholi and the maid said that their relationship was consensual.
Bedi talked about how she found out about the alleged affair between her then-boyfriend and her maid in great detail in a former magazine interview. Bedi jokingly teased her maid about her boyfriend after seeing what looked like love bites on her neck. The maid didn’t want to say who it was, but she finally did and said it was someone Bedi knew.
“At that, she started crying and said, ‘Yes, it was him,'” Bedi recounted, remembering the moment she realized it was Aditya.
Bedi was shocked and asked for additional information. She found out that the supposed relationship started after one of the couple’s conflicts. Bedi also said that Pancholi had promised the maid that he would make her an actor, which Bedi thinks was a way to control her. When Bedi asked the maid why she let it happen over and over again, she is said to have said, “Ek baar jab hogaya fir kya farak padta hai” (Once it happened, what does it matter anymore?). Bedi said that it seemed like Pancholi would often go straight to the maid when he came to her house and tell her that she was the only one he ever loved.
Pooja Bedi thought about what went wrong when her unstable relationship came to a tragic end. She said the breakup was “inevitable” and that their relationship had been “as good as dead for a couple of months.” She thought they were just “holding on to it, hoping we could find a way out.”
Bedi thought about why they broke up and said that Pancholi might have wished to get back together with his wife. “I believe he wants to go back to Zarina… She replied, “He probably broke up with me because he wanted to go back to her.” Bedi, on the other hand, said that if he did go back to Zarina, it would be for the sake of their daughter, Sanaa. “Anyway, since we’re done, I think he should be able to live his life the way he wants to,” she said in the end.
Pooja Bedi’s last professional appearance was in the Telugu movie Shakti in 2011.