Neelam Kothari Says She Never Knew Govinda Was Married

Neelam Kothari said she was too young to date Govinda and did not know he was married when they shot 14 films together. She spoke on 11 September 2026 with husband Samir Soni beside her, and said a relationship was never on the table because her parents were strict.

The pairing that sold tickets in the late 1980s has lived for 36 years on Govinda’s 1990 confession that he wanted to marry her. Her own account is smaller and colder: she was a chaperoned 16-year-old from Hong Kong whose job, as she tells it, was Hindi, dance steps, and getting home with a relative.

She Still Cannot Say If He Was Married

The host put the old claim to her directly, that Govinda had been in love with her off screen. She did not bless it, deny a feeling she never claimed, or dress it up as a great almost-love. She stalled on the basic fact of his status.

Listen, I don’t know. First of all, I was too young. And now, I’ve just gotten to know that I think he was married at that time. Engaged or married, I really don’t know.

Neelam Kothari, actress, on Baatein Dil Se

She came back to the same point in plainer words. Her focus was her Hindi and her dancing. Jokes aside, she was way too young, and she had very strict parents, so that was never an option.

The conversation is on the official Times Now YouTube channel as episode 18 of Baatein Dil Se, a long unfiltered sit-down with Samir Soni in the next chair.

She also said she was always accompanied by a family member because she was very young, and that this was not because the industry was a bad place. On set, she said, people pampered her and treated her like a child. Samir added that Jackie Shroff and Sanjay Dutt were particularly protective of her.

That is the working relationship she is willing to describe. A girl from Hong Kong, still learning the language of the films, with a relative in the room, being minded by older male stars. It is a long way from the story in which she was the woman a new hero almost left his fiancée for.

The 1990 Confession He Never Took Back

Govinda told that story himself in a 1990 magazine interview, and he has not walked it back. He said he first saw her at producer Pranlal Mehta’s office, in white shorts, hair falling straight, and that he was scared to answer her hello because his English embarrassed him. He had watched her debut film Jawaani again and again only to see her.

He said the more they worked, the more he liked her. He praised her to friends, to family, and to Sunita Ahuja, the woman he was already committed to. He told Sunita to change herself and become like Neelam, and to learn from her. He called himself merciless. Sunita, in his telling, told him he had fallen in love with her for what she was and should not try to change her.

Neither did Neelam know about it. She got to know only after a year. I probably did not tell her because I did not want to break this successful screen pair. And to be honest, to a certain extent, I did exploit my personal relationship with Neelam for professional ends. I played dirty with her. I should have told her that I was married.

Govinda, actor, 1990 magazine interview

He also said that in a fight, after Sunita said something about Neelam, he asked Sunita to leave him and broke off the engagement. Had she not called him after five days and coaxed him back, he said, he would probably have married Neelam. He wanted to marry her, and he did not think there was anything wrong with that.

Buried in the same interview is the line that matches what Neelam has now said. He hated the word affair, he said, because he could be sure only of his own feelings. What she felt, she knew. Maybe there was nothing from her side.

He already left a gap where her consent, her knowledge, and her age should have been. She has now spoken into that gap, and she has not filled it with a romance.

Sixteen on a Set With a Chaperone

Neelam Kothari was born on 9 November 1969 in Hong Kong, to a Gujarati Jain father, Shishir Kothari, and a Parsi mother, Parveen Kothari. She is 56. She learned jazz ballet as a child, which is the training behind the image she used for herself on the Ilzaam set: a little ballerina on her tippy toes, trying to match a hardcore filmy dancer take for take.

The family jewellery business is older than her film career. She has described four generations in the jewellery trade, and after she stepped back from acting around 2001 she went back to stones and design. That later life is the one she sits in now, on a couch next to Samir, being asked to re-litigate a rumour from her teens.

THE AGE ON THE FIRST TWO FILMS

• Her age: She was 16 when Love 86 and Ilzaam opened in February 1986.
• His age: Govinda, born 21 December 1963, was 22 on those releases.
• The gap: Six years sat between a new hero and a chaperoned co-star still learning Hindi.
• The pairing: They still went on to share 14 films before the jodi cooled.

Govinda met Sunita before he was a star. They married on 11 March 1987 in a private temple ceremony, when Neelam was 17. He has said he kept the marriage quiet because he feared it would hurt his career as a romantic hero, and that Neelam learned only after a year. In 2026 she still will not sort engagement from marriage. That is not coyness. It is the status he has admitted he hid.

On Ilzaam, she remembered the work, not a courtship. It was a competition on set, she said, over who would get the step first, who would get it right, and who was giving more retakes. He was hardcore filmy. She was the little ballerina. The combination worked on screen. That is the specimen she offered of their actual days together, and it is a dance rehearsal, not a secret engagement.

A Year When Six Shared Films Came Out

Producers kept booking the pair because audiences bought the chalk-and-cheese contrast: her polish, his Virar bounce, her English, his Hindi. She has said she did about 40 films in all. Her listing on IMDb records the Govinda run as 14 movies with him, among them Ilzaam, Sindoor, Khudgarz, Do Qaidi, Billoo Baadshah and Taaqatwar.

Their first two titles landed two weeks apart. IMDb logs Love 86 on 14 February 1986, and Ilzaam on 28 February 1986. Trivia on the Love 86 page notes that her voice was dubbed because of her Hindi diction, which tracks with the line she still uses: her job then was the language and the dancing.

THE GOVINDA-NEELAM RELEASE LIST

Six shared films in 1989 is the tell. For one calendar year the industry treated them as a default romantic unit, even as he was already a married man whose wedding had not been announced. He later said jealousy set in when she started scoring hits with other heroes, among them Chunky Pandey, and that he was scared of losing the one good heroine he had. In his version, the professional fear and the personal crush were the same feeling. In hers, there was no relationship to lose.

Sunita Called Him Back After Five Days

The person who had to live with that crush was Sunita Ahuja, not Neelam. He said he told Sunita to become like Neelam and that he broke the engagement when she pushed back. She called after five days. They married on 11 March 1987. She has said they kept the wedding quiet for about a year and went public after their daughter Tina’s first birthday, because a married hero was thought to lose female fans.

That is the bargain the 1990 interview described: he wanted Neelam, he owed Sunita, and his mother’s word sat above both. He said his father was fond of Neelam and that she had even visited Virar with her mother, but that his mother felt he must honour his word to Sunita. For him, no relationship could be more important than his mother.

THE DATES THAT KEEP RETURNING

1. 14 February 1986: Love 86 opens, the first Govinda-Neelam release.
2. 28 February 1986: Ilzaam opens two weeks later.
3. 11 March 1987: Govinda marries Sunita Ahuja in a private temple ceremony.
4. 1990: He says he wanted to marry Neelam and that he played dirty by hiding the wedding.
5. 24 January 2011: Neelam marries actor Samir Soni.
6. 5 December 2024: Sunita files for divorce in Bandra Family Court, citing adultery, cruelty and desertion under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955.
7. 19 August 2026: Govinda’s manager, Shashi Sinha, says she has withdrawn the petition.
8. 11 September 2026: Neelam, with Samir beside her, says she was too young and did not know he was married.

Sinha called the withdrawal happy news and said there was no separation. He also said his only regret was how public the fight had become. Days later Sunita said she had taken the case back because, in her words, Govinda and his Roopa co-star Komal Rani Swarnkar were planning to get married. He had already posted videos telling her not to interfere with his work and to watch her language.

The 2026 marriage crisis is a different story from 1986. It still explains why the old tape is being played again. A man who once asked his fiancée to become like a 16-year-old co-star is, four decades on, in a public row over another much younger actress, while the original co-star is finally asked, on camera, whether any of it was hers.

Samir Soni Is Not Keeping Score

Samir Soni did not treat the rumour as a test of his marriage. He said Govinda has always been a sweetheart whenever they have met. Then he shrugged at the calendar.

Something that may or may not have happened 20 years ago, he said, he did not know about, so how could he hold on to it. He still claims he was madly in love with you.

The 20-year figure is loose; the first films are 40 years back, and the confession is 36 years old. The useful part of the line is the “may or may not.” Sitting next to the woman who was actually there, he would not convert Govinda’s old hunger into a fact about her.

WHAT SHE RULED OUT

• A relationship: Strict parents meant it was never an option, she said, jokes aside.
• Private knowledge: She still cannot say whether he was engaged or married at the time.
• A bad-industry alibi: A relative came to set because she was young, she said, not because film sets were unsafe.
• A secret affair as the work: On Ilzaam she remembers retakes and a dance contest, not a courtship.

Neelam married Rishi Sethia in October 2000 and the marriage ended in 2005. She married Samir on 24 January 2011, and they adopted their daughter Ahana on 2 September 2013. The jewellery house she built later, Neelam Jewels, is the career she talks about as her own. Netflix audiences now know her from Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives, which is a long way from being asked, at 56, to account for a man’s feelings in 1986.

Govinda has not answered her 2026 remarks in public. He does not need to for the two statements to sit side by side. In 1990 he said he lost his heart, hid a wedding, used a personal bond to keep a screen pair intact, and could not swear she felt a thing. In 2026 she said she was too young, she had a relative on set, her parents would not have allowed a relationship, and she still cannot tell engaged from married. The romance that nearly ended an engagement existed, on the record we have, in one person’s telling.