‘Only Shatrughan Sinha visited me’: Pahlaj Nihalani recalls month-long hospitalisation

Filmmaker and former chief of Board of Film Certification Pahlaj Nihalani has revealed he was hospitalised for nearly one month after he had a bad case of food poisoning.

Filmmaker Pahlaj Nihalani was admitted in Nanavati hospital in Mumbai for 28 days and has now been discharged, he said on Saturday. The former chief of Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) also revealed that they kept his hospitalisation a secret and only Shatrughan Sinha knew about it, outside the family.

Pahlaj Nihalani presided over a controversial phase in the CBFC’s history.

Elaborating on his problems that led to his hospitalisation, Pahlaj told a leading daily, "Suddenly, one night at about 3 am, I felt a bit uneasy and vomited a lot of blood. I was advised hospitalisation. It was a case of chronic food-poisoning but it was an emergency- and initially, I was kept in the ICU for about 5-6 days."

He added, "I thought I'd go home in 2/3 days after I was out from the ICU. But my temperature did not go down for the longest time, I was getting fever and a very bad stomach-ache essentially in the evening, the diagnosis kept extending, and that became a matter of concern."

The filmmaker also said that it was conscious decision to keep the news of his hospitalisation a secret. "Shatru (Shatrughan Sinha) visited me in the hospital, recently. We had largely kept it private," he added.

Pahlaj's most recent outing was Govinda-starrer Rangeela Raja that proved to be a flop at the box office and was widely criticised by critics. It was with Pahlaj's 1986 film, Ilzaam, that Govinda made his Bollywood debut.