Dimple Kapadia was just 16 when she became Mrs. Rajesh Khanna, leaving behind a promising film career for a marriage that nearly broke her. By 24, she’d had enough and walked away. But decades later, when Rajesh Khanna lay dying, Dimple made a decision that shocked everyone. This is her story of survival, reinvention, and the messy legal battle that followed his death.
The Marriage That Became a Cage
Rajesh Khanna was 15 years older, at the peak of his fame, and by all accounts, a difficult man to live with. Dimple gave birth to daughters Twinkle and Rinkie, raised them largely alone, and by 1982, had had enough. She left.
But here’s the thing: she never divorced him. Indian society in the 1980s wasn’t kind to separated women, especially ones who had married superstars. Divorce would have been a scandal. So Dimple chose a middle path—she stayed legally married, lived separately, and focused on rebuilding her life.
The Comeback That Defined Her
In 1984, Dimple returned to films with Saagar. She wasn’t the bubbly teenager from Bobby anymore. She was a woman—complex, weathered, magnetic. Critics noticed. Audiences noticed. She won her first Filmfare Best Actress award.
Over the next two decades, Dimple carved out a career on her own terms. She worked with Shekhar Kapur in Drishti (1990), a dark exploration of a crumbling marriage that felt uncomfortably autobiographical. She played Akshay Kumar’s mother-in-law in Dil Chahta Hai (2001) with grace. She went international with Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020), proving at 63 that she could still command a screen.
But she never remarried. Never publicly explained her marriage. Never wrote a tell-all book or gave tearful interviews. Dimple Kapadia has always kept her cards close, and that mystery has only added to her legend.
The Return to Rajesh Khanna
When Rajesh Khanna’s health began failing in 2011, Dimple did something that surprised many: she came back. Not as a wife returning to a marriage, but as a caretaker, perhaps a friend, maybe something more complicated than either.
She was photographed at Aashirwad, his Bandra bungalow, during his final months. She was there when he died on July 18, 2012. The media called it a reconciliation. Dimple never called it anything.
But her return also meant confronting uncomfortable realities. During those final years, Rajesh Khanna had not been alone. Anita Advani, an actress who had appeared in films during the late 1970s and 1980s, had been living with him. The exact nature of their relationship was murky—Anita later claimed they were secretly married—but her presence complicated the narrative of Dimple’s return.
What’s undeniable is this: despite everything—the separation, the years of silence, the pain, and the presence of another woman in his life—Dimple didn’t let him die alone. That tells you something about her character, even if the exact nature of their relationship remains unknowable.
The Legal Aftermath and Anita Advani’s Claims
After Rajesh Khanna’s death, complications arose. His estate, his will, his final years—all became subjects of legal scrutiny. In 2013, Anita Advani filed a lawsuit against Dimple, daughters Twinkle and Rinkie, and son-in-law Akshay Kumar, alleging she had been forcibly removed from Aashirwad and never shown Khanna’s will.
The case is still unresolved in 2025, more than a decade later. Dimple has never publicly commented on it, maintaining the same dignified silence she’s held for decades. But the lawsuit has kept the messiness of Rajesh Khanna’s final years in the public eye—a reminder that even after death, some stories refuse to be neatly closed.
For Dimple, who spent years trying to move beyond her identity as “Rajesh Khanna’s wife,” the legal battle must feel like being pulled back into a past she fought hard to escape.
Why Dimple Matters
Dimple Kapadia’s story matters because it’s a story of survival. She was married off as a child to a man whose fame overshadowed everything. She walked away when it became unbearable. She rebuilt her career in an industry that rarely gives women second chances. She returned to care for the man who had once made her life impossible, not for optics, but because she chose to.
Today, at 67, Dimple continues to act, continues to live on her own terms, and continues to refuse easy narratives. In an industry obsessed with happy endings, she’s proof that sometimes the most powerful story is the one that refuses to end neatly.
The legal complications continue to unfold, with Anita Advani speaking out again in 2025 about her battle for dignity and recognition, insisting she was never shown Rajesh Khanna’s will and that her fight has never been about money.
