MUMBAI: Imran Khan, who shot to fame with his debut film “Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na” in 2008 before gradually fading from showbiz headlines, returned to the national spotlight on Thursday after Mumbai Police issued him a notice directing him to leave India by October 28.The actor, an American citizen by birth and the grandson of filmmaker Nasir Hussain, has been charged with allegedly violating provisions of the Immigration and Foreigners Act.His lawyer has said the decision will be challenged in the Bombay high court, news agency PTI reported.Five days earlier, on October 10, videos and photographs of a smiling Imran being detained during a protest at August Kranti Maidan demanding the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar went viral on social media.“Apparently, I am going for a drive,” Imran wrote in an Instagram post accompanying a photograph of himself inside a police van, raising his hand in a peace sign.The 43-year-old actor, who holds an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card, was accompanied by his partner Lekha Washington and cousin Zayn Marie Khan at the time.Born in the US to software engineer Anil Pal and psychologist Nuzhat Khan, Imran is the grandson of Nasir Hussain, who made blockbusters such as “Dil Deke Dekho”, “Yaadon Ki Baarat” and “Karavan”. His mother is Aamir Khan’s first cousin.Imran played the younger version of Aamir in his uncle’s debut film “Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak”.After his parents separated, he moved to Mumbai and studied at Bombay Scottish School, followed by Blue Mountain School in Coonoor and Gurukul in Ooty. He later moved to Sunnyvale, California, to live with his father and pursue higher education.In interviews around the time of his debut, Imran said he adopted his mother’s surname because he had largely grown up in India with her and his stepfather, Raj Zutshi, PTI reported.
Imran’s political stand and participation in protests
Despite maintaining a relatively low social media profile for a Bollywood actor, Imran has 1.2 million followers on Instagram.He has spoken out following the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protests in June-July and again during the ongoing agitation over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. He participated in both.Explaining his decision to join the protests in an interview with a YouTube channel, he said, “Critique of a political official is not a critique of a country. No politician is the country. The people, at any point, who stand up are citizens. They are the country as much as any individual politician.”“If you outnumber that politician by the laws of democracy, you are more of the country than that one politician. So, we have to also separate this idea. The idea that you have to defend your love for the country,” he said.In the same interview, the actor said democracy could not thrive when people were afraid, PTI reported.“I believe that any structure of authority should be open to questioning. It must be called upon to justify its power and its authority. And if it cannot justify its authority, then it should be broken down and altered, and replaced by something that is more just,” he said.
From a promising debut to a decade-long break
Imran has been candid about his struggles in the film industry and his eventual decision to step away from acting.In one of his interviews in 2024, he said he fell into depression after leaving Bollywood. He said he quit because he “simply couldn’t be bothered to invest the time, energy and effort required to stay in this profession”.He initially aspired to become a film director and joined the Los Angeles branch of the New York Film Academy. He later moved to Mumbai and trained at Kishore Namit Kapoor’s acting institute, PTI reported.Imran then took a break from acting that stretched into a decade-long absence. His personal life also changed, with him and Avantika eventually divorcing and sharing custody of their daughter.He returned to films with a guest role in the Vir Das-directed comedy “Happy Patel: Khatarnaak Jasoos”.
Why Imran returned to films
In an interview with PTI in January this year, Imran spoke about his decision to return to cinema after a decade away.“In late 2023, when I started reemerging from my hibernation and connecting with the world, people said, ‘hey, this guy is alive’, and started reaching out and sending me stuff. The thing is that my approach, desire at this point is very different from what it was back then,” he said.“I’m not seeking to build myself into a very big star, to be the biggest star, to be in the top three, to be on the list of most highly paid people. Unless I love the film and really want to make it, I won’t, because the rest of it is a metric for the rest of the world, but it’s not a relevant metric for me,” he said.(With agency inputs)
