Vivek Oberoi opens up about Salman Khan controversy, says “It was like a fatwa was issued against me”

That Vivek Oberoi and Salman Khan don’t see eye-to-eye is a fact that that every Bollywood fan knows. They came into each other’s bad books when years ago Vivek Oberoi dated Salman’s ex Aishwarya Rai, and Salman was none too pleased about it.

 Although neither Aishwarya nor Vivek publicly admitted to their relationship, it was quite obvious that Vivek was head over heels for the beauty. Vivek held a press conference in 2003 where he confirmed that Salman called him 31 times, threatening to kill him. Subsequently, his relationship with Aishwarya died, along with his career.

In a recent interview with Mirror, Vivek recounts that phase from his life.”It was like a fatwa was issued against me from the powers that be.”

The man he refers to in this statement is Salman Khan.

In the infamous press conference, Vivek had made a lot of allegations against Salman which included a drunk Bhai harassing Vivek over the phone. His then-girlfriend, Aishwarya Rai, never went on record about the episode and shortly after, there were reports that the two had broken up.

“When my personal life got messed up, I couldn’t keep my eye on the ball.”

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His film releases were reducing rapidly and not many were successful but he tasted success again after the release of Shootout at Lokhandwala in 2007. But even that couldn’t revive his career! “Even if I gave a hit, work wouldn’t follow. Shootout at Lokhandwala became a huge hit, but I sat at home for a year after that.”

Though Vivek continued to do films, he never reached the level everyone had expected him to reach. Also, there were times when he had little work. There were reports that Salman made sure that the plum projects wouldn’t go to Vivek.

In the recent report, the tabloid quoted an acquaintance of Vivek as saying, “To what extent Salman blacklisted him [in] the industry is a matter of conjecture. It’s easy to assume that he used his clout to ask people to exclude Vivek from projects. But then, Salman didn’t get along with Ranbir Kapoor and John Abraham either, and they’ve both got work through the years.”

Currently, he is getting good reviews for his negative role in his Tamil debut “Vivegam”, and also for his performance in the web-series, “Inside Edge”.