Mahesh Bhatt reveals Parveen Babi’s husband moved to Pakistan, shares why he broke with her: ‘Could see her heading towards suicide’

Parveen Babi died at 50 in 2005

Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt and Parveen Babi were in a relationship while he was married to Kiran Bhatt. In a recent interview, Bhatt shared details about their relationship and also revealed they broke up after her mental health deteriorated. The director even revealed that Babi was once married, but her husband moved to Pakistan and never returned.

Talking to BBC News Hindi, Mahesh Bhatt said, “About her getting married, I got to know about it later when we were already in a relationship. When her mother would visit from Junagadh, she would discuss this sometimes because by then we were in a relationship. I was living with her. So there, it was discussed that she had been married once and then the man moved to Pakistan.” The director added that when he visited Pakistan many years later, Parveen’s husband wanted to meet him but the meeting couldn’t happen. “Many years later, in 2003, I visited Pakistan for a film festival. There I was told that someone wants to meet you but I couldn’t meet them. I never said I don’t want to meet him but it somehow did not work out. I was thinking why would he want to see me? I was never a person who shut my door to anyone”, the Arth director said.

Talking about why his relationship with the actress ended, Bhatt stated that she had a “mood disorder” and he “tried a lot to help her out” but her disease led to a tragic end of their realtionship. “I saw her go through her collapse. I went through it with her. And when you see someone breaking down in front of you…I saw her leave in the morning for her shoot with her make-up on but when I came back in the evening, she was shivering and sitting in a corner like an animal. She kept saying ‘someone is going to kill me.’ She was suffering from schizophrenia. I didn’t even know that there is something as mysterious as this mental disorder that changes your whole personality. I could see that she was heading towards suicide but I didn’t have the energy to go through that whole cycle with her again. After that, we parted ways.”

On January 20, 2005, Parveen Babi died at the age of 50. Her body was found in her Mumbai apartment on January 22. The post-mortem revealed that she had not consumed anything for three days, and as a consequence, starved to her death and succumbed to total organ failure and diabetes.

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