Shehzad Khan’s Bhalla in Andaz Apna Apna remains one of Hindi cinema’s most loved comic henchmen. In a 2026 conversation with ANI, he said the role began with an unusual condition from director Rajkumar Santoshi: do not use your own voice. Imitate your father, Ajit Khan.
A father’s screen image followed him to school
Long before Bhalla, Shehzad was Ajit’s son at school. He recalled that girls there were frightened of him because they believed the villain on screen was the man at home. ‘Ladkiyaan mujhse bahut darti thi,’ he said. He remembered making the same mistake himself while watching Andaz: after a train scene, he thought Ajit had actually gone away, only to find him at home as usual.
Ajit had built a distinctive villain persona through films such as Zanjeer, Yaadon Ki Baaraat and Kalicharan. That recognition was strong enough to shape how children treated his son before he entered the industry.
Bhalla’s voice was a casting condition
When producer Vinay Kumar Sinha offered the role of Bhalla, Santoshi’s condition was that Shehzad should not use his own voice but imitate Ajit’s. He drew on his father’s expressions, gestures and dialogue delivery, turning the familiar menace into deliberate comedy. The character’s introduction—’Mera naam hota hai Vinod, lekin saari duniya mujhe Bhalla ke naam se jaanti hai’—became part of his identity.
Ajit was not amused
The joke did not please Ajit. Shehzad recalled that his father, in essence, told him not to repeat the act. ‘Maine serious image banaya, tumne…’—a short complaint that he had spent years building a serious screen image and his son had turned it into comedy. In a 2025 conversation with Bollywood Hungama, Shehzad added that Ajit initially objected after friends told him about the copied voice, but understood how seriously his son was pursuing acting.
The Bhalla material left out of the edit
There was more Bhalla than audiences saw. Shehzad says several comic punches were removed from the final cut of the 1994 film.
- A deleted sequence showed Bhalla, Teja and Robert being taken away by the police, with one more Bhalla line inside the van.
- Shehzad estimates three or four additional comic punches were cut.
The irony is tidy: Shehzad grew up trying to separate Ajit Khan the father from Ajit Khan the villain, then used that very persona to create one of Hindi cinema’s enduring comic characters.
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