Salman Khan was in ‘pain’ after Baba Siddique’s death, says co-star: ‘He was struggling’

5 min readNew DelhiJun 19, 2026 02:08 PM IST

Salman Khan went through one of the toughest phases of his life, during the filming of Sikandar, in October 2024. The actor was grieving the loss of his close friend and politician, Baba Siddique. Around the same time, Salman was also dealing with a painful rib injury, that impacted his mobility. Now, in a recent interview, his Sikandar co-star Vishal Vashishtha, recalled the emotional and physical pain he was going through.

During a chat with The Free Press Journal, he shared, “We were shooting Sikandar in very tough circumstances, especially for Salman sir. And that’s not a hidden fact. He was mentally and emotionally drained, and physically as well, he was going through a lot. We saw it ourselves; it wasn’t a made-up story, it was real. He would walk slowly and somehow finish the scene. The moment the director called cut, he would go back and get physiotherapy done. He needed to stay mobile because he had to perform all those action sequences.”

The actor continued, “One thing I took away from him was that even after so many years in the industry, he was still there for his work. I can’t even imagine what was going on in the background of his life, but he continued shooting. What stayed with me was this: despite everything that was happening around him, after so many years, he was still doing it. He was in pain, yet he kept going. There were a life-threatening issue outside but he was still showing up. It was tough.”

Sikandar’s director AR Murugadoss had earlier claimed that shooting the film was challenging because Salman mostly arrived on set late. Vishal said, “We also waited – sometimes in the vanity van and sometimes on the set. But I was certain something was wrong. He wasn’t simply sitting in his van doing nothing. By the last day, he had improved a little physically. There was a reason the action sequences were scheduled later because he needed time to recover. Before that, during the household scenes, he was struggling. And by struggling, I mean even getting up from a chair and sitting down was very difficult for him.”

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He further added, “You have to give him the benefit of the doubt because it was clearly a struggle. And with everything that was happening in the background, it couldn’t have been easy. Just dealing with the amount of security personnel around you all the time is suffocating. It was a very difficult situation.”

Baba Siddiqui death

In October 2024, Baba Siddique was shot dead outside his son Zeeshan Siddique’s office in Bandra East, Mumbai. He was declared dead after being hit with two gunshot wounds to the chest. As per reports, the three assailants were connected to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, which has always targeted Salman Khan over accusations of hunting a blackbuck, an animal considered sacred in the Bishnoi community.

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What AR Murugadoss said about Salman Khan

During a conversation with Valaipechu Voice last year, Murugadoss shared how Salman Khan would come late for the film’s shoot. He also revealed that they would often shoot indoors, mostly relying on VFX amid death threats to the actor.

“It’s not easy to shoot with a star. Even day scenes, we have to shoot at night because he turns up to sets only by 8 PM. We are people who are used to shooting right from early mornings, but that’s not how things work there.” The filmmaker claimed that the film shoot would start shooting only after 9 pm and only indoors. “Almost everything was shot on green mat and we used VFX extensively to get the daylight effect for the scenes that were shot at night. On top of that, multiple people used to suggest a lot of spot changes on the set in the script,” he expressed.

The director added, “If there were four kids in a scene, we would have to shoot with them at 2 AM, even if it’s the shot of them returning from school. They would become tired by that time and usually dozed off.”

Salman Khan didn’t stop himself from responding to Murugadoss’ allegations. On Bigg Boss 19, when he was asked about naming a film he regrets doing, Salman didn’t name the film directly, but said in a sarcastic tone, “Lekin kya hai na, main set pe raat ke 9 baje pahuchta tha, toh usme gadbad ho gayi. Meri pasaliyan tooti thi, isne jo hamare director (AR Murugadoss) sahab hain unhone ye kaha. Lekin unki picture (Madharaasi) abhi ek release hui hai jisme actor 6 baje pahuchta tha.” (I used to arrive on sets by 9 PM and that created issues. This is what the director said, but my rib was broken. Recently, another picture of his was released, and the actor of the film used to reach the set by 6).”

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Sikandar also starred Rashmika Mandanna, Kajal Aggarwal, Sathyaraj, Sharman Joshi and Prateik Babbar. It was a huge failure at the box office.