Pankaj Tripathi was an ABVP activist, was jailed for a week in his college days

Pankaj Tripathi celebrates his 46th birthday on Monday, and we revisit the time when he talked about his week-long stint at Patna's Beur jail in Bihar.

Pankaj Tripathi celebrates his 46th birthday on Monday and we revisit the time when he talked about going to prison. He was once jailed for seven days when he was active in student politics. ()

Pankaj Tripathi in a still from Criminal Justice: Adhura Sach.

According to a 2019 PTI report, Pankaj had joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) when he was in studying in Magadh University, Patna. He shared his experience of Beur jail in Patna and told the news agency, "You don't have anything to do in jail. No meetings, no cooking, not doing anything. You are completely alone. When a man is extremely lonely, he starts discovering himself. I met myself in those seven days. When I started reading Hindi literature, I realised how alienated I was to this world. That completely changed me," he said.

In a 2020 interview with The Lallantop, he also said that many of his ABVP friends from the time are now MLAs in Bihar. He also explained that the RJD-Congress coalition government was in power in Bihar at the time and both Congress and leftists parties in the region had staged a protest against a firing incident in Madhubani in which cops had opened firing at students.

The actor said, “We were political prisoners so we had to stay in a separate barrack and it was around the Christmas break for courts so we had to stay for a week. Later, we came out on bail.”

Pankaj's latest outing, Criminal Justice Adhura Sach, is streaming online on Disney+ Hotstar. His last theatrical release, Sherdil The Pilibhit Saga, is also now available on Netflix. He has a very interesting line up for projects. He will feature alongside Akshay Kumar in his upcoming film OMG Oh My God 2. He also has the third season of his popular crime-based show, Prime Video's Mirzapur in the pipeline.