Married to the Mob

Why do actresses get attracted to the bad boys — the very bad ones with a gangsta rap or the big cons? While some have been oblivious of the men and their dubious character, some have known their past and yet gone ahead with the romance.

Monica Bedi

“Jacqueline said she did not know that Sukesh was a conman. Judging by the way he has been changing his name and work profile often to con different people, one can give her the benefit of doubt. It was the same case when Monica Bedi did not know who Abu Salem was when she started liking him. He had introduced himself as someone else when she met him in Dubai. He kept in touch with her and revealed who he was at the second meeting, by which time Monica was in love with him. He was extremely nice to her, came across as a genuine person who cared for her which led her to liking him and being with him,” says a policeman who prefers anonymity.

With great difficulty Monica  managed to disentangle herself from his clutches but not before she went to jail for a passport forgery case. While Abu Salem is in Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail, Monica is still trying her luck in the entertainment world. She even appeared on Bigg Boss.

One wonders how these gullible girls fall so easily into a trap?

“These actresses didn’t have a godfather in the industry, so they took the help of the real mafia godfathers. It got the lecherous men from the industry to stay away from them and it also got them a lot of roles — and everything was just one phone call away,” said an industry source.

Threatening calls

“I was busy doing a very big film back then in the 90s. I got a call from an underworld don who said I should be working on ‘this’ said film where ‘this’ actress was the heroine. In those days I was really busy, but I could not avoid doing the film as our man said that my film producer will also adjust his dates. The film does not look good today on my resume, but well, I am alive. All conversations would end with, hope your kids are ok?’ So in that sense it was always a veiled threat,” says the actor who was a huge action star in the 90s.

Mandakini

Yasmin Joseph, popular by her screen name as Mandakini was a hotshot actress in the 80/90s especially after being a Raj Kapoor discovery in Ram Teri Ganga Maili. Sadly, the actress was linked to none other than the biggest don Dawood Ibrahim and had also shifted to Dubai to stay with him.

But the story soon was over after Dawood’s name was linked to the bomb blasts. The actress who hails from a Meerut based anglo Indian family has however stayed away from speaking about it. She later married a Buddhist monk, Dr Kagyur T Rinpoche Thakur who was the original Murphy baby. The actress says clearly, “I am not connected to Dawood anymore. It is a past and unfortunate. I don’t need to clarify that to the media every time they meet me,” she says.

Mamta Kulkarni

Mamta Kulkarni, who acted with Salman Khan in Karan Arjun, is rumoured to have been married to Vicky Goswami, alleged to have links with the underworld.
The crime branch of Thane police, investigating an international ephedrine supply racket recently sent a notice of being a ‘declared proclaimed offender’ to former actress Mamta Kulkarni and her partner and drug lord Vicky Goswami. They pasted the notice at Mamta’s home in Versova and Goswami’s home in Ahmedabad.

Interestingly, while Dawood Ibrahim’s father was a Mumbai police cop, so was Mamta Kulkarni’s, albeit in the traffic department.

In fact Mamta and Vicky call media persons and filmfolk from Kenya! “I was asked recently to make a film on her life and Vicky also said that he would fund it as Mamta has now become a Yogini,” says a well known photographer turned filmmaker.

Lesser known stars

The less popular ones like the Pakistani import Anita Ayub, discovered by Dev Anand and starred in films like Gangster and Pyar Ka Tarana, was examined by the cops once if she was a gangster’s mole rather than a moll. She later shifted to the US.

There was actress Sona who was in the news because she resembled Madhubala a lot and that was the reason that Dilip Kumar’s friend and underworld don Haji Mastan married her.

Incidentally Kangana who played Monica’s role in Bhatt’s Gangster starring Emraan Hashmi and Shiney Ahuja also played Sona’s role in the Ajay Devgn and Emraan Hashmi starrer film Once Upon a Time In Mumbai.