Thirteen years after Rajesh Khanna’s death, Anita Advani is still fighting—not for money, she insists, but for something harder to reclaim: dignity. In a raw new interview with journalist Vickey Lalwani, the woman who claims she was the superstar’s secret wife revealed she has never seen his will and is battling for the right to live as she once did—acknowledged, not erased.
Anita Advani Speaks Out: “It’s About Respect, Not Rupees
In the interview uploaded to Vickey Lalwani’s YouTube channel on February 14, 2026, Anita Advani made one thing clear. This isn’t about inheritance. It’s about identity.
“It’s not money. It’s also my respect,” she said. “More than anything else, and also the way I want to be, the way I was. I have a right to do that.”
Anita, long rumored to have been romantically involved with Rajesh Khanna during his final years, spoke about the legal battle she has been waging since 2013. That year, she filed a case against Dimple Kapadia, daughters Twinkle and Rinkie Khanna, and son-in-law Akshay Kumar, alleging they forcibly removed her from Khanna’s iconic Aashirwad bungalow after his death.
Her voice carried frustration and resignation in equal measure. “Woh bungalow toh waapis aa nahi sakta, toh ek dignified life mai jeena chahti hoon,” she said. The bungalow may be gone, but she still wants to live with her head held high.
The Will She Claims She Never Saw
One of the most striking revelations in the interview was Anita’s claim that she was never shown Rajesh Khanna’s will. Not once.
“Yeh maloom tha ki sabke liye hai bahut kuch,” she said—she knew the will had provisions for many people. But whether her name appeared in it, or what it said about her years with the superstar, remains a mystery to her.
This raises uncomfortable questions. Why, after 13 years, has the will’s content not been disclosed to someone who lived with Khanna during his twilight years? What does Indian law say about the rights of live-in partners in inheritance disputes? And why is this case still unresolved in 2025?
Bollywood has seen its share of contested legacies—Vinod Mehra’s alleged secret marriages, Kishore Kumar’s estate battles, the Kapoor family’s internal rifts. Anita Advani’s case fits a troubling pattern: aging superstars, fractured families, and companions left in legal limbo long after the funeral pyres cool.
The Secret Marriage Claim That Won’t Go Away
Anita’s story has always been murky, shaped more by whispers than official records. Last year, in an interview with Meri Saheli, she dropped a bombshell: she and Rajesh Khanna were secretly married.
“We got married privately, but in the film industry, no one talks about such things openly,” she said. “Everyone says ‘we’re friends’ or ‘we’re in a relationship’ or something else. But it was already reported in the media that I was with him, so neither of us felt the need to go and publicly announce that we were married.”
No marriage certificate has surfaced. No public acknowledgment was ever made by Khanna. But Anita has stuck to this claim for over a year now, framing her legal fight not as a financial grab but as a quest for recognition of a bond she says was real, even if invisible to the law.
Rajesh Khanna’s Final Years: A Life in Shadows
To understand Anita’s fight, you have to understand Rajesh Khanna’s final chapter. India’s first superstar married Dimple Kapadia in 1973, when she was just 16. By 1982, the marriage had crumbled. They separated but never divorced.
Decades later, as Khanna’s health deteriorated in 2011 and 2012, Dimple returned. She cared for him during his final months, a gesture widely praised in the media. He died on July 18, 2012, at the age of 69.
But where was Anita during those final days?
According to her, she was blocked. She has claimed in previous interviews that Khanna’s family stationed bouncers at Aashirwad to prevent her from attending his last rites. If true, it’s a devastating image: the woman who says she was his wife, locked out while the world mourned.
Who Is Anita Advani? The Woman Behind the Headlines
Anita Advani isn’t a household name, and that’s part of the problem. She began her Bollywood career in 1978 with a small role as a dancer in Shalimar, starring Dharmendra and Zeenat Aman. She appeared in a handful of films—Daasi, Chorni, Aao Pyaar Karen, Saazish—but never broke through.
In 2013, a year after Rajesh Khanna’s death, she entered the Bigg Boss 7 house. She didn’t win. She didn’t become a star. But she told her story, again and again, to an audience that mostly didn’t believe her.
Now, in 2025, she’s still telling it. And the question lingers: why would someone spend 13 years fighting for something that brings only public scrutiny and legal bills, unless there was truth beneath the noise?
What Anita Wants Now
When Lalwani asked if her legal battle was about financial security, Anita’s answer was immediate and firm. No.
“It’s not money,” she repeated. “It’s also my respect.”
She doesn’t want the bungalow back. She knows that ship has sailed. What she wants is harder to quantify: the right to live as she once did, with dignity intact, without being painted as an opportunist or erased from a chapter of Rajesh Khanna’s life that she insists was real.
Whether the courts will give her that—or whether public opinion ever will—remains to be seen.
Anita Advani’s fight may never end in a courtroom victory. But her refusal to disappear, 13 years after Rajesh Khanna’s death, forces an uncomfortable reckoning: how Bollywood treats the women who loved its legends in the shadows, and what happens when they demand to be seen.
