Even as the media swirls with speculation regarding the lehenga that Sonakshi Sinha will wear for the wedding celebrations on Sunday evening, or whether she’ll break into a dance, people who have been following the many stories circulating about her rumoured relationships, recall the time when she was linked with Salman Khan.
Salman and Sonakshi’s paths first crossed when she made her debut in his action comedy, ‘Dabangg’ (2010), and he’s said to have played Cupid and brought the couple together.
It is said that the couple met when Zaheer was shooting for ‘Notebook’, the romantic drama produced by Salman Khan. Zaheer was making his Bollywood debut in the film opposite another newbie, Pranutan Bahl, daughter of actor Mohnish Bahl, and granddaughter of Nutan.
Before Zaheer entered her life, Sonakshi had briefly dated her ‘Tevar’ co-star Arjun Kapoor in 2014. Their relationship collapsed within a year.
Salman, incidentally, is a good friend of Iqbal Ratansi, Zaheer’s father, and a leading Mumbai jeweller with interests in real estate (Blackstone Housing and Infrastructure Limited), lighting equipment for Bollywood (Film Tools, Lights and Grip) and media (Zahero Media and Internet).
So, how did Sonakshi get linked with Salman? In the pre-deepfake era, when photoshopped pictures were common, there was one of Salman and Sonakshi that went viral in 2020. It showed them getting married at a private ceremony in Dubai.
Reacting to the picture, Sonakshi took to social media and put to rest the speculation that had acquired a feverish breathlessness. Taking to Instagram, she said, “Are you so dumb that you can’t tell the difference between a real and a morphed picture?”
Sonakshi and Zaheer, whom she lovingly describes as her “personal psycho”, have been dating for the past seven years. The eldest child of leading Mumbai jeweller Iqbal Ratansi acted opposite Sonakshi in the critically panned 2022 film ‘Double XL’, where he plays a London-based TV line producer, Zorawar Rahmani.
The film, which also features Huma Qureshi, sees Sonakshi as fashion designer Sara Kapoor, who relocates to London from Delhi after a broken relationship.
Zaheer was last seen on the big screen in a special appearance with Salman’s brother-in-law Aayush Sharma in the action film ‘Ruslaan’, released earlier this year. Like ‘Double XL’, ‘Ruslaan’ also bombed at the box office.