LAHORE: Vishwanath Patekar famously known as Nana Patekar, the Indian actor whose growling don in “Welcome” is quoted as readily in Lahore as in Mumbai, died early on Thursday at his home in Goa after a suspected cardiac arrest. He was 75.
His last hours were spent waiting for help. Dr Shekhar Salkar of Manipal Hospital told Indian news agency ANI that Patekar texted a friend at about 2:30am to say he felt unwell. The friend did not see the message at that hour and reached the actor’s Dona Paula apartment only around 4am, finding him drenched in sweat and drifting out of consciousness.
A caretaker was sent to the hospital, minutes away, to bring an ambulance. Its crew began cardiac massage in the flat, and doctors kept trying for roughly 45 minutes before pronouncing him dead shortly after 5am. A medico-legal case has been registered and a post-mortem is due.
For Pakistani viewers the loss carries a cruel symmetry. It is exactly two weeks since Mushtaq Khan, the “Ballu” of the same film, died in Mumbai, so Uday Shetty and his limping henchman have gone within a fortnight of each other. Indian films have been shut out of Pakistani cinemas since 2019, yet that 2007 comedy still does the rounds here in clips and catchphrases.
Patekar was never a simple figure for this side of the border to embrace. He held an honorary rank in the Indian army and spent time with its troops during the 1999 Kargil conflict. In 2016, after the Uri attack, when Indian producers barred Pakistani talent and Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan were told to leave India, he declared that Pakistani artists came second to his country and compared film stars to bedbugs beside the nation.
Even then, he granted that the visiting actors were artists and not terrorists, and said the question could be looked at afresh once ties improved. Last year his foundation handed out 4.2 million Indian rupees to 117 families in Rajouri and Poonch, on the Indian side of the Line of Control, who had lost relatives or homes in the May 2025 fighting.
The same man gave Hindi cinema one of its best-remembered pleas against communal hatred that the “Krantiveer” scene in which his character mixes the blood of a Hindu and a Muslim and dares a mob to tell them apart. That pull between warmth and flag-waving has not eased in Bollywood. In August, Sunny Deol drew a backlash for likening Pakistan to a maternal aunt.
Born Vishwanath Patekar on January 1, 1951, in Murud-Janjira on the Maharashtra coast, he came up through Marathi theatre and made his Hindi debut in “Gaman” in 1978. The gangster Anna in “Parinda” brought the first of three National Film Awards, with “Krantiveer” and “Agni Sakshi” supplying the rest. He directed the army drama “Prahaar” in 1991 and received India’s Padma Shri in 2013.
Off screen he co-founded the Naam Foundation for drought-hit farmers in Maharashtra. His reputation took a blow in 2018 when actress Tanushree Dutta accused him of harassment on a film set a decade earlier. He denied it, and Mumbai police closed the case the following year.
His final screen role came this year in “O’Romeo”, alongside Shahid Kapoor. Akshay Kumar, his co-star in “Welcome” and “Housefull 5”, wrote that it was hard to believe he was gone, while Riteish Deshmukh called the death the end of an era.
Patekar is survived by his wife, Neelkanti, and son, Malhar. The family had not announced funeral arrangements by Thursday morning.
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