When Amitabh Bachchan Was Clinically Dead For A Couple Of Minutes Following A Fatal Blow By Puneet Issar On Coolie Sets ( Photo Credit – Facebook; Movie Still )
Advertisement
This morning, Amitabh Bachchan fans heard the sad news of the superstar getting injured while shooting his next ‘Project K’ in Hyderabad. The actor informed fans via his blog that his ‘rib cartilage popped broke and muscle tear to the right rib cage’ during an action sequence and is now back in Mumbai to rest.
While the 80-year-old actor will ‘take some weeks’ to rest and recover, we couldn’t help but remember his 1982 near-death accident with the nation praying. For those who don’t know, the actor sustained a serious injury while shooting for an action sequence for ‘Coolie’. The accident not only landed him in the hospital, but he was also clinically dead for a couple of minutes.
As shared online by many sites over the past several years (we have referred to ETimes for details), Amitabh Bachchan and co-star Puneet Issar were shooting some pretty intense scenes for the Manmohan Desai film when the latter accidentally delivered a fatal blow. This punch to Amitabh’s gut resulted from the actor mistiming his jump, rendering him unconscious and bleeding in his lower abdomen.
The news of Amitabh Bachchan’s injury was shared with all via print, radio (All India Radio), BBC on short-wave, and the state-run Doordarshan. Hearing it, the entire nation became emotional and prayed for the actor’s well-being. In fact, many believe the scene where he meets the people towards the end of ‘Coolie’ was inspired by what happened in real life. The actor once spoke about a near-death experience and said he has revived thanks to adrenaline injections.
In a post, Sr Bachchan once recalled the incident and wrote, “I went into almost a haze and a coma-like situation. Within five days of coming into Breach Candy, I had another surgery and didn’t come out of that one for a very, very long time, and I was clinically dead for a couple of minutes.” He continued, “Then Dr Wadia – who looked after me and is an absolute life-saver, just said, ‘I’m going to take a last chance’ and he started pumping cortisone/adrenaline* injections into me one after another almost 40 ampules of it, with the hope that something would happen and then I got revive.”
Here’s some trivia. As per reports, after this incident, Amitabh Bachchan celebrated August 2, 1982, as his second birthday – the day the doctors revived him.
