Vidya Sinha - Personal Life

Personal Life

Sinha was born on 15 November 1947 in Mumbai. Her father, S. Maan Singh, was a Chennai-based assistant director who worked mainly with south Indian film production companies. Much of Vidya's childhood was spent in Chennai (then known as Madras]]). Vidya began modeling for baby products and acting small roles in south Indian films as a child artist. However this was very occasional and her parents did not allow her schooling to suffer at all. As a college-student in Chennai, she met and fell in love with Venkateshwaran Iyer, a south Indian engineer, also from Chennai. They were married in 1968, when Vidya was 21, with the blessings of parents. A daughter, Jahnavi, was born in 1971. It was after all this, and with her husband's encouragement and support, that Vidya stepped into films after she was offered the part of an ordinary middle-class girl. Her first film, Rajnigandha, released in 1974, was an unexpected runaway hit. It was a low-budget, no-frills film, shot in an urban middle-class milieu; the heroine, Vidya, belonged to exactly this stratum and totally looked the part. After the success of this film, Vidya did roles of the same type in several other films over a period of 12 years.

By the mid-1980s, this type of role was no longer feasible in the Hindi film industry and Vidya was unwilling to shed her clothes and do indecent films. Age also was against her. She therefore winded down her film work and finally called it a day by 1986. The next 10 years were spent in overseeing the higher education and marriage of her daughter and taking care of aging parents and an ailing husband. Mr. Iyer died in 1996; Vidya's parents had previously died and Jahnavi was now settled abroad with her own growing family. With her daughter's encouragement, Vidya gradually returned to acting, working in TV serials like Bahu Rani (2000), Hum do hain na, Kavyanjali (2004), etc.

After her husband's death, Vidya continued to live alone in her sea-facing flat in Versova, Mumbai. One of her neighbours was Netaji Salunkhe, an elderly doctor who had practised medicine for over 30 years in Australia. Salunkhe's wife had died and after that, he had returned to india to take care of his old mother and spend his own old age in the land of his birth. Vidya and Netaji, both in similar situation in life, became close to each other and got married after much hesitation in 2005. This was not liked by Jahnavi and other relatives of Vidya. One of the reasons for marriage was that Salunkhe had no children of his own and thought that Vidya's family would accept him and treat him like a father. This did not happen. Then Vidya and Mr. Salunkhe adopted a child from an orphanage. When this happened, Vidya's daughter Jahnavi and other relatives objected because they thought that the orphan child will take away money and inheritance which they were expecting only for themselves. They made all kinds of trouble and harassed poor Vidya beyond all limits. They brainwashed her into believing that she was being used and exploited. Finally, in January 2009, under the instigation of her family members, Vidya filed a complaint against her 70-year old husband, claiming that he tortured her mentally and physically. She also claimed that Salunkhe demanded money from her.He had been an asthama patient for many years and his stay in jail aggravated the problem considerably.In order to avoid further imprisonment Salunkhe agreed to divorce on any conditions which Vidya and her family imposed. He had to give up custody of his adopted child and pay Rs. 10,000/- per month for her maintanance.