Hrithik’s Stardom Could Have Rakesh Roshan His Life After The Underworld Attack.

Summary: Rakesh Roshan explains why the underworld attacked him after Hrithik's popularity.

The Roshan family had a turbulent year in 2000. His father, filmmaker Rakesh Roshan, was nearly killed by the underworld outside his Mumbai office when Hrithik Roshan shot to fame with his first movie, Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai. Rakesh disclosed the cause of the attack in a recent interview.

Rakesh recalled how the underworld targeted Hrithik because of his sudden fame and wanted him to appear in a movie that they were funding. Rakesh, however, rejected their requests.

He said, “I never gave any indication that Hrithik could do a film for them. I kept putting them off, saying Hrithik had no dates, which, in any case, was the truth. They then asked me to take dates away from other producers and give them to them. This again, I refused to do.”

The Hindi cinema industry was heavily influenced by the underworld in the late 1990s and early 2000s. According to Rakesh, those were tense and frightening times that made it nearly impossible to be creative.

“Once I had committed my son’s dates elsewhere, I refused to give in to arm-twisting tactics. I never gave in. With the kind of tension and fear some of us had to bear, we couldn’t do anything creative, let alone make a film.”

And hence, just a week after the release of Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai, Rakesh Roshan was shot twice outside his office. Fortunately, he survived and drove himself to the hospital. 

Hrithik Roshan thought himself "directly or indirectly responsible" for the attack and even contemplated quitting the movie business.

Hrithik talked about his distress in an interview with Simi Grewal at the time, but he ultimately made the decision to stay and went on to work with his father on several successful films.