Bollywood’s brush with controversies

Mandakini (1993)

If there were a Nobel Prize for notoriety, Mandakini would have won it hands-down. Her entry with Ram Teri Ganga Maili made her a household name (she appeared in a diaphanous sari revealing her breasts). Then after a string of flops, she began to be seen in the company of a certain Mr. D (read Dawood Ibrahim), playing arm candy to him at matches in Sharjah, weird stuff like that. Then post the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993, Mandakini literally vanished once Dawood Ibrahim was cited as the culprit behind the carnage. An entire generation is obsessed with the idea of her being Dawood Ibrahim's mistress, that the don himself had sired a son thanks to her. Today, Mandakini, leads a very different life. She is married to a descendent of the Dalai Lama called Dr Kagyur T Rinpoche Thakur. less