Nana Patekar, three-time National Award winner, cremated with state honours

Nana Patekar had kept twelve maunds of dry wood at his Pune farmhouse for his cremation. He said so during a media interaction while promoting The Vaccine War. On Thursday night those logs burned at the farmhouse near Khadakwasla in Donje village, under full state honours, after his son Malhar lit the pyre.

That morning of 8 October 2026 he was at his flat in Goa with his nephew Prasad Patekar. A medical team sent to the flat found him unconscious. Attempts were made to revive him before he was taken to Manipal Hospital. Doctors there worked on him for about forty-five minutes. There was no response. Nana Patekar was declared dead at 5:20 a.m. He was seventy-five. The cause was given as cardiac arrest, a suspected heart attack. His son, Malhar Patekar, confirmed the sequence to the media. The death was registered as a medico-legal case. A post-mortem examination was expected to establish the exact cause.

A short clip of a conversation between Anil Kapoor and Nana Patekar had resurfaced on YouTube. In it Patekar reprimanded Kapoor over a casting slight from decades earlier, still visibly hurt.

“The role was initially offered to me. But you asked Vidhu Vinod Chopra to cast Jackie Shroff instead,” Patekar says. When Kapoor answers that both he and the director preferred Shroff, the reply is instantaneous. “You were a big star. You could have convinced the director to cast me. But you did not.”

The film was Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Parinda. Patekar had wanted the parallel lead; Jackie Shroff got it. He played the villain instead, known simply as Anna. He filled the part with menace and vulnerability in equal measure. The performance became his breakthrough. It won him the National Film Award for Best Supporting Actor.

That was the first of three. A National Film Award recognizes artistic and technical merit across the Indian film industry and is presented each year in New Delhi. He won Best Actor for Krantiveer in 1994 and Best Supporting Actor a second time for Agni Sakshi in 1996. Four Filmfare Awards, two Maharashtra State Film Awards and two Filmfare Awards Marathi followed. In 2013 he received the Padma Shri for his contribution to cinema and the arts.

Bengani placed the exchange inside the longer pattern that followed him through the industry—mercurial temper, dead-pan humor, unpredictable and unfiltered behavior, and a raw restlessness that underlined his performances whether the part was silly or serious. He did not sand those edges for the camera or the conversation. The same single-minded pressure, turned toward a different door, measured how far he would go for a role that did not fit him at all.

Amol Palekar was reluctant to cast him in Thodasa Roomani Ho Jaayen. The part asked for qualities Patekar did not seem to have.

“The role had a softness, a poetic quality to it. Nana, meanwhile, was the complete opposite. When I told him that, he took it up as a challenge, came to my house everyday for 10 days, asking me to mould him the way I wanted. And true to his word, he was a totally different person by the end of it, so single-minded was his commitment to the craft,” Palekar said.

He had been born Vishwanath Patekar on 1 January 1951 in Murud-Janjira, Raigad District, Maharashtra, and was an alumnus of the Sir J.J. Institute of Applied Art in Mumbai. His film debut came in Muzaffar Ali’s Gaman in 1978. In 1991 he directed himself in Prahaar: The Final Attack, opposite Dimple Kapadia and Madhuri Dixit. Across the years that followed he refused the chocolate-box mould the industry preferred, keeping the raw presence that made him hard to place and harder to forget. He could play the loudest, most melodramatic of roles and still underplay when a part needed softness, bringing conviction to both. Years later the same force found a wide comic register as the gangster Uday Shetty in Welcome. A popular orator connected to the grassroots, he refused to serve as any party’s spokesperson and spoke for the common man through film and theatre.

From 2015 the Naam Foundation, which Patekar co-founded, turned to farmers and water. In 2008 Tanushree Dutta accused him of misconduct; the court cleared him for lack of evidence.

Television colleagues spoke of the loss in plain terms. Sara Arfeen Khan placed him beyond the ordinary measure of a performer.

“It is very, very heartbreaking. He was such a phenomenal actor. In fact, he was not just an actor; he was an institution in himself. His voice, his intensity and his acting are things that generations will remember,” she said. She added a second note on time: “Life is unpredictable. We make so many plans for tomorrow, but the truth is that today is all we have. Whatever your dreams are, whatever you want to contribute, and whatever you want to say to someone, do it today. Tomorrow may or may not come.”

Sana Amin Sheikh called the news shocking and the loss huge. Mugdha Chaphekar said she had learnt a great deal from his films and named Natsamrat one of her utmost favourites, grateful she had watched even without sharing a set. Kiran Bhargava looked past the screen to the work with farmers, the share of earnings sent to villages, and the simple life he chose despite Mumbai. “He lived for his art and for serving humanity,” she said. Priya Thakur was among those who paid tribute. Co-star Aneet Padda remembered barely speaking at their first meeting, taking in a man so honest, unfiltered and unapologetically himself. Director Aditya Sarpotdar recalled the days he and his writer spent at the farmhouse narrating the film to him.

The body was flown from Goa to Pune. At the airport, state leaders received it and paid their last respects. From there the remains were taken to Donje village in Pune Rural, to the farmhouse he had been closely associated with over the years. Jackie Shroff was among the colleagues and friends from the film industry who attended, along with several political figures. Family members, relatives, friends and admirers filled the grounds. Thousands of people gathered late into the night. A ceremonial guard of honour was accorded before the cremation. Around 11:30 p.m., amid chants of “Nana Amar Rahe,” Malhar Patekar lit the funeral pyre and performed the last rites. Twelve maunds of dry wood at Donje.