Anita Advani Loses Legal Battle As Bombay High Court Rejects Claim Over Rajesh Khanna

The Bombay High Court has dealt a final blow to actress Anita Advani’s decade-long legal battle for marital recognition. On Wednesday, April 1, 2026, the court dismissed her plea seeking to legally validate her relationship with the late Bollywood icon Rajesh Khanna as a marriage. This ruling upholds previous judicial decisions that rejected her claims on both technical and substantive grounds.

Presiding over the case, Justice Sharmila Deshmukh dismissed the appeal after hearing extensive arguments from both sides. Advani’s legal team faced stiff opposition from counsel representing Rajesh Khanna’s estranged wife, Dimple Kapadia, his daughter Twinkle Khanna, and son-in-law Akshay Kumar. While a detailed judgment is currently awaited, the court’s verbal order was clear, "First appeal is dismissed."

The dispute traces back to the death of India’s first superstar in July 2012. Advani, who was closely associated with Khanna during his final years at his iconic Mumbai bungalow, Aashirwad, claimed their bond was equivalent to a legal marriage. However, the Khanna family maintained that Dimple Kapadia remained his sole legally wedded wife, as the two had never formally divorced despite their long separation.

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Anita Advani has consistently alleged that she and the superstar were married in a private ceremony. Recalling the event in an interview with Meri Saheli, she stated, "We got married privately, but in the film industry, no one talks about such things openly... We had a small temple in our house. I had a mangal sutra made, gold with black beads. He made me wear it, then applied sindoor and said, “From today, you are my responsibility.''

This latest setback follows a string of legal defeats for Anita Advani. In 2015, the High Court quashed her domestic violence complaint against Kapadia and her family, ruling there was no evidence of a relationship in the nature of marriage. Following Khanna’s death, Advani also alleged she was forcibly removed from his residence and excluded from his final rites.