Warm, friendly affable and accessible, Mithun Chakbraborty suddenly dropped out of the radar in 2015. With this, he instantly elevating himself to the position of producer-director K C Bokadia (coincidentally one of Mithunda’s favourite filmmakers) who in 2015 disconnected his phones and disappeared from Bollywood with no forwarding address.
Bokadia had reason. After the massive failure of his Mallika Sherawat-starrer Dirty Politics, he owed the entertainment market huge amounts of money. But Mithunda? Even his son Mimoh stopped taking anxious calls from his father’s friends.
Now that he has resurfaced he says he hadn’t gone anywhere. “No, I was right here. There were some issues,” he trails off vaguely.
Until 2015, Mithunda was seen on every other reality show and film offered to him. In fact, between 2012 and 2015 Mithuda was seen in as many as 21 Hindi and Bengali films and as a judge on numerous dancing and singing reality shows.
Then it all ended and Mithunda just vanished. Anxious inquiries revealed some vague reasons for his disappearance. A “helicopter accident” and a “severe injury” were fearfully brought up though this was far from the truth.
After a vain search to locate him through every source possible (including his suddenly-sullen son) Mithunda is back. And a close filmmaker-friend reveals the reason for his abrupt dropout of sight. “It had nothing to do with his health. It had to do with questions raised about his assets after he was named in West Bengal’s Saradha chit-fund scandal in 2014.When Mithun was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate he was shocked and humiliated. He had not joined politics to get his name tainted,” says the source.
In January 2014, Mithunda was elected into the Rajya Sabha through West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul’s support. After the Saradha scandal Mithunda not only cut himself away from public glare he also distanced himself from his Mamata didi.
And now with the political scandal having waned, the Disco Dancer is back in Ram Gopal Varma thriller Geher and Anil Sharma’s Genius. As for politics, none of that for Mithunda.
A friend says, “You will not hear Mithunda going anywhere near any politics in the near or distant future.” That’s one entertainer after Amitabh Bachchan and Govinda to have sworn off politics. Is Rajinikanth listening?
