Who is Kamlesh Kanhaiyalal Kapasi? Sanjay Dutt’s best friend in Rajkumar Hirani’s Sanju played very energetically and warmly by Vicky Kaushal. A section of the press has excitedly dug up the “real Kamlesh” from the US. He is apparently a man called Paresh Ghelani whom Sanjay Dutt affectionately calls ‘Paria’.
But sorry to puncture everyone’s enthusiasm. Paresh is not the role model for Kamlesh in Sanju. A very close friend of Sanjay Dutt spills the beans. “It’s true that Paresh whom Baba calls Paria is a very close friend. It’s also true that he is a Gujarati NRI based in the US. But Paresh can’t be Kamlesh in the film for the simple reason that Paresh came into Baba’s life after the Mumbai bomb blasts when Baba’s real problems with the law started. In the film Kamlesh is shown to be Baba’s friend from long before the blasts supporting and pulling him out of his crisis when Baba’s mother died and he was hooked to drugs. Paresh was nowhere on the scene during that troubled phase of Baba’s life.”
Dutt’s friend reveals that Baba’s best friends during his most troubled phase when he was faced with terror charges were his two brothers-in-law Kumar Gaurav and Owen Ronson. “They were his pillars of strength after the bomb blasts and the serious allegations,” says the friend who also adds that the incident shown in the film where an underworld don (played by Shiyaji Shinde) bullies Sanjay Dutt to attend a Ganesha visarjan and Dutt gathers the courage to say no, actually happened. Says the friend, “It happened with Chhota Rajan. Baba told him he won’t attend his visarjan. Later Chota Rajan landed at Baba’s shooting for Vidhu Vinod Chopra in Kashmir for Mission Kashmir with the prasad from the puja, exactly as shown in the film.”
