Manyata Dutt is an Indian businesswoman, former Bollywood actress, and the current CEO of production company Sanjay Dutt Productions. She is best known as being the wife of actor superstar Sanjay Dutt. She is also famous for her raunchy item number song in the 2003 Prakash Jha directed movie Gangaajal.
Contents
Early Life
Manyata Dutt was born as Dilnawaz Shaikh on 22 July 1979 into a Muslim family in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. She grew up in Dubai. She moved back to India in the late 1990s, and stayed in a nondescript flat in Yari Road.
She began her movie career with Deshdrohi directed by Kamaal Rashid Khan. It was Jha who gave her the new name Maanayata. Despite her success in the item song, she did not get good movie offers. She then worked in B-grade movie titled ‘Lovers Like Us.’ This film’s rights were later bought by Sanjay Dutt. It is believed that Dutt has removed all DVDs and VCDs of the film from the market. In 2008, she acted in Priyadarshan directed comedy-drama movie Mere Baap Pehle Aap.
Manyata left acting after the sudden demise of her father. She subsequently took over her father’s textile business which has offices and factory in Malad and Navi Mumbai.
Manyata Dutt – First Husband
Manyata’s first marriage was to Miraj-ul Rehman (Meraj). Just after the well-publicized wedding of Manyata and Sanjay Dutt, Miraj made his entry like a villain in a Bollywood film, stating that Manyata was his wife. Miraj, a struggling writer in Bollywood, showed pictures of his marriage with her from 2003, and said that they had a four-year old son who lived in Hyderabad. The story of course, took another twist when Miraj was arrested for sending obscene messages to prominent Bollywood actresses like Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Kangana Ranaut and Neha Dhupia.
Meraj had filed an appeal in court stating that the marriage of Sanjay Dutt and Manyata was illegal as he and Manyata were still legally married. A Mumbai Sessions Court dismissed that appeal.
The magistrate acquitted Manyata of all the charges, and said that though she had married Meraj in 2003 she had approached a qazi to dissolve the marriage, after realizing that he was a conman, cheater and fraudster.
How Manyata met Sanjay Dutt
Manyata has stated that she and Sanjay knew each other for 9 years before they got married. However reports allege that producer Nitin Manmohan introduced Sanjay to Manyata in 2006.
According to Mumbai Mirror, Manyata started meeting Sanjay Dutt, when he was involved with Nadia Durrani. When Nadia would be out of town, Manyata would stay over. Sanjay Dutt was impressed by the fact that while all his other girlfriends were interested in his money and credit cards, Manyata was someone who only cared about making and feeding him his favorite food.
While onlookers thought that Manyat was just another girl in Sanjay Dutt’s life, nearly everyone was taken by surprise, when they appeared publicly as a couple in Jan 2006 at the Star Screen awards.
Sanjay and Manyata got married in a private ceremony in Goa on 7th February 2008. In 2010, she gave birth to fraternal twins, Iqra, a girl, and Shahraan, a boy. After Manyata entered Sanjay Dutt’s life, the actor became more disciplined. She became the architect of his life, right from designing his home to managing his finances and career, as Yaseer Usman wrote in his book on Sanjay Dutt; Manyata made sure that her husband got a grip on his career. Binge-drinking was controlled, fair-weather friends were shown the door and people who took Dutt for granted, had to check on themselves.
Trivia
- Manyata was also known as Sara Khan when working in Bollywood as an actress. The name ‘Manyata’ was given to her by Prakash Jha, when she worked for an item number for ‘Gangajal’
- Dia Mirza has played the role of Manyata in the 2018 Sanjay Dutt biopic film Sanju.
