Kamal Ghorui
Former Bollywood actor Somy Ali has alleged that she was sidelined by the Hindi film industry after she spoke publicly about being in an abusive relationship with a powerful actor. Though she did not name him outright, Somy was previously in a long-term relationship with Salman Khan and had earlier also posted about it on social media. She had said about him, “The eight years spent with him were the worst years of my existence. In addition to tonnes of affairs and flings, he would constantly belittle me by calling me ugly, stupid, and dumb. Not a day passed that he wouldn’t make me feel worthless and small.” Though, she deleted this Instagram post later. Now in a recent interview, she says that after she spoke about being in this abusive relationship with a superstar actor, many people from the industry abruptly cut ties with her. She said in an interview with Money Control, “No one took a stand when I spoke out and I’ve been, in fact, boycotted from Bollywood. I spoke up against him and his revenge was that he decided he was going to destroy my NGO and malign my reputation. People like Suniel Shetty, people like Vivek Oberoi, who is like my rakhi brother, every single one of them stopped talking to me. And I was like, what happened all of a sudden?” She added that it soon became evident that “if this person says ‘Somy Ali se baat mat karo,’ then Somy Ali se baat mat karo.”
Reflecting on how she entered the film industry, Somy revealed that acting was never part of her plan. “Why did I leave? I think everyone knows I didn’t go there for acting and acting just happened. I didn’t go there for acting. I went there for another reason,” she said. Despite this, she found herself working alongside some of the biggest names in Bollywood at the time.She credited destiny for her journey, saying, “I believe in fate and destiny. What’s supposed to happen, what’s already written, is going to happen. You cannot change it.” Somy recalled working with actors like Sanjay Dutt, Om Puri, and Salman Khan, describing her career trajectory as something that “just happened.”Looking back, she described herself as an inexperienced teenager navigating a complex industry. “I was a young girl who wasn’t interested in acting. I always missed my dance rehearsals. I would drag Suniel Shetty from Roshan Taneja’s class to Shiv Sagar and say, ‘Let’s go eat pav bhaji.’ And I ended up working with the top actors. Om Puri ji in Mississippi Masala. It was crazy. It just happened.”
