It’s rare for a veteran actor to pull back the curtain on the darker, unglamorous side of a shoot, but Anu Aggarwal just did exactly that. In a candid Instagram post accompanied by throwback photos, she detailed the accident that nearly ended her career on a physical level. She slipped and fell onto a car while shooting a scene with Dev Anand, fracturing her coccyx. The pain was immediate, but the isolation, she says, was the real shock.
Anu was living alone at the time. When the injury struck, she expected the standard production support—someone to drive her, check in, or coordinate care. That never happened. "There was no one from the production who helped," she wrote. A neighbor stepped in, providing the name of a doctor who told her the situation was critical. He warned that without immediate surgery, she risked being left with a permanently crooked spine. The stakes were life-altering.
She recovered quickly and was ready to return to set, but her mind had already drifted to a Dhrupad retreat in the lavender fields of France. She had planned to miss the film’s Paris premiere in 1995, prioritizing her spiritual journey over the red carpet. By the time she was ready to shoot, the project had already hit a wall. The makers ran out of money. Three months passed with no filming.
Anu had already shot a song and a key scene with Dev Anand, but the halt was permanent. She communicated her exit to the makers and left. Return of the Jewel Thief, directed by Ashok Tyagi, remained unfinished, becoming a footnote in film history. It stands as a stark reminder that even in the golden era of Bollywood, the human element of production can easily be overshadowed by logistical failures.