Pradeep Rawat’s Son Recalls His Final Days as Aamir Khan and Lagaan Team Remember the Veteran Actor

Pradeep Rawat spent much of his screen career playing men audiences were meant to fear. Away from those imposing characters, however, the veteran actor’s final weeks unfolded quietly with his family as his health deteriorated following a relapse of cancer.

Rawat died on August 4, 2026, at the age of 74 after being hospitalised for several weeks. His manager Siddharth Tiwari confirmed at the time that the actor had previously recovered from cancer before the disease returned.

Days after his death, Rawat’s son Vikramaditya spoke about what the family experienced during that period, providing a personal account of how rapidly his father’s condition changed.

His recollections add another dimension to the life of an actor remembered by different generations as Ashwatthama in Mahabharat, Deva in Lagaan and the formidable antagonist of Ghajini.

Vikramaditya Rawat recalls his father’s declining health

Speaking during his father’s last rites, Vikramaditya recalled that the seriousness of Rawat’s condition was not immediately apparent to the family.

According to his account, his father initially developed persistent hiccups. Doctors first considered the possibility of a stomach infection, but his health subsequently deteriorated and he required intensive medical care.

Vikramaditya said the gravity of the situation became unmistakable when he saw doctors administering CPR to his father.

It is an important account because it comes directly from Rawat’s son. At the same time, the details should not be interpreted as a medical explanation for his death.

Rawat’s manager separately confirmed that the actor had been battling cancer following a relapse and had experienced a severe decline in his platelet count during his final period of hospitalisation.

His family was joined by colleagues for the final farewell

Rawat was cremated in Mumbai on August 5 in the presence of family, friends and several colleagues from the film industry.

Among those attending were Aamir Khan and filmmaker Ashutosh Gowariker, alongside Rawat’s Lagaan co-stars Akhilendra Mishra, Daya Shankar Pandey and Amin Hajee.

The presence of the Lagaan team was particularly meaningful given Rawat’s connection with the landmark 2001 film.

Daya Shankar Pandey remembered him as a performer with a powerful personality and compared his standing in South Indian cinema with that of veteran villain Amrish Puri. Pandey also noted that Rawat had worked in hundreds of films.

Aamir Khan remembers a formidable co-star

Aamir Khan and Pradeep Rawat shared the screen across three particularly significant Hindi films.

Rawat appeared as Sultan in Sarfarosh, played Deva Singh Sodhi in Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan and later became Ghajini Dharmatma opposite Aamir in the 2008 Hindi version of Ghajini.

Following Rawat’s death, Aamir remembered him as a fearless and committed actor and stressed the importance of his performance to Ghajini.

That film ultimately became the performance most closely associated with Rawat among mainstream Hindi-film audiences, but his relationship with the character began before the Aamir Khan version existed.

Pradeep Rawat played Ghajini twice

One of the more unusual aspects of Rawat’s career was his involvement in both major versions of Ghajini.

He played the antagonist in A.R. Murugadoss’ 2005 Tamil film starring Suriya. When Murugadoss remade the story in Hindi with Aamir Khan three years later, Rawat returned as the principal villain.

Few character actors become so integral to a story that they survive the transition between an original film and its remake while the leading star changes.

Rawat did.

But Ghajini represented only one chapter in a career that moved comfortably between industries and languages.

From Mahabharat to South Indian cinema

Before Ghajini made his villainous screen image instantly recognisable to another generation, Rawat had already appeared as Ashwatthama in B.R. Chopra’s Mahabharat.

His film career included Sarfarosh and Lagaan, but he also built an extensive body of work across Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam cinema. His Telugu breakthrough came with S.S. Rajamouli’s Sye in 2004, in which his portrayal of Bikshu Yadav became another notable antagonist role.

That ability to cross industries is central to understanding his career.

Rawat was not simply a Bollywood supporting actor who occasionally worked elsewhere. For audiences in different regions, completely different performances could define their memory of him.

His son found meaning in the turnout

Amid the difficult recollections of his father’s final days, Vikramaditya also reflected on the number of people who arrived to pay their respects.

He felt his father would have been happy to see how many people had come to say goodbye.

That response perhaps offers a more fitting way to remember Rawat than concentrating exclusively on the circumstances of his death.

His final weeks were a deeply personal experience for his family. His public legacy, however, was built over four decades and across several Indian film industries.

The Celebrity Hour Take

There is an understandable temptation to turn an actor’s final moments into the emotional centre of an obituary. In Pradeep Rawat’s case, that would undersell the larger story.

Vikramaditya’s account deserves to be reported because it provides first-hand insight into the family’s experience. But Rawat’s lasting significance comes from an unusually wide-ranging career from mythological television to an Oscar-nominated Hindi film, from major Telugu productions to playing the same formidable villain opposite Suriya and Aamir Khan in two versions of Ghajini.

For an actor who specialised so successfully in intimidating screen characters, the tributes after his death reveal something beyond the roles: colleagues from different stages of his career returned to remember the performer behind them.