Govinda and Sunita had tied the knot in 1987. Theirs was a love marriage and they dated for a few years before they got married. However, when they had met, Govinda was still a struggling actor. With time, he attained stardom. When he began doing several movies, the actor had actually fallen in love with Neelam as they had worked together in films like Khudgarz’ and ‘Love 86’. Their on-screen pairing was much loved.
The ‘Coolie No 1’ actor had almost broken off his engagement with Sunita and was thinking about getting married to Neelam. But eventually he went back to Sunita and kept his marriage a secret for a year. Govinda had spoken about it in an interview with Stardust and he said, “After I started getting busier, my relationship with Sunita went through a change. She began feeling insecure and jealous. And I was of no help. She would nag me and I would lose my temper. We had constant fights. In one of those fights, Sunita said something about Neelam, and I lost my head and called it quits. I asked Sunita to leave me. I broke off my engagement with her. And had Sunita not called me after five days and coaxed me into it again, I would probably have married Neelam.”
He further confessed that he played dirty with Neelam and regrets it. He said, “Neither did Neelam know about it. She got to know only after a year. I probably did not tell her because I did not want to break this successful screen pair. And to be honest, to a certain extent, I did exploit my personal relationship with Neelam for professional ends. I played dirty with her. I should have told her that I was married.”
In another interview, Govinda had confessed that he wanted to marry Neelam as he fell in love with her, but could not let go off his commitment towards Sunita. He expressed, “Yes, I wanted to marry her. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Neelam was the ideal girl, the kind every man visualises for a life-partner. The kind of girl I wanted. But that was getting emotional. There was another practical side. Just because I had fallen in love elsewhere, I couldn’t overlook my commitment towards Sunita. If there was no sense of duty in a man, this would go on. Leave one for another and another for another.”
In a recent interview, Sunita has confessed that she was not insecure when Govinda’s link-up stories came up but joked that she’s insecure now as he’s above 60 and now you never know what he does. ‘Aadmi sathiya jaata hai after 60,’ she had joked.
