Sunil Dutt, a film director and actor, died of a heart attack on May 25, 2005, at his Mumbai home. Let us remember Sunil’s refusal to remove his wife Nargis off the ventilator while she was taken to a hospital in the United States on his 17th death anniversary. Sanjay Dutt, Priya Dutt, and Namrata Dutt are the three children of Nargis and Sunil. Also see: Nargis and Sunil Dutt’s Romance: When he saved her from a fire and she met her true love
After a fire broke out on the set of their 1957 film Mother India, Sunil and Nargis famously fell in love. While recovering from their injuries, they were claimed to have become closer. On March 11, 1958, the pair married. Nargis was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the early 1980s, and he lost her soon after.
Nargis fell into a coma while in a hospital in the United States. Because Nargis had been in a vegetative condition for nearly four months, the physicians advised Sunil to switch off the ventilator. Sunil refused to turn it off, and Nargis awoke from her coma, and they returned to Mumbai. Nargis died just a few months after they returned on May 3, 1981.
Priya Dutt recounted how Sunil changed following Nargis’ death in a 2018 interview with Filmfare. “Our relationship with our father deteriorated when mum died,” she stated. He used to be a strict disciplinarian. We never talked about movies in the dining room. He changed drastically after their mother died. He reminisced about her a lot. ‘People say I fell in love after I saved her from a fire on the set of Mother India,’ he explained. But I would have saved anyone else. I was smitten by the woman she was.”
Sunil’s acting career was as varied as his personality; he appeared in, produced, and directed movies. Mother India, Waqt, Humraaz, Padosan, Mujhe Jeene Do, Gumrah, Sujata, and Mera Saaya are just a few of his outstanding films as an actor.
