Bhansali Under Fire: Is Bollywood’s Safety Crisis Being Ignored?

Behind every breathtaking frame of a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film, there is an army of invisible workers — carpenters, electricians, spot boys — and according to the All Indian Cine Workers Association, some of them have been paying for that grandeur with their lives.

The reported death of 42-year-old carpenter Chandradhari Singh Yadav on the sets of Love & War in the early hours of June 17 has cracked open a conversation that Bollywood’s powerful inner circle has long preferred to keep quiet. Yadav allegedly died after suffering an electric shock during a night shoot, leaving behind a wife and two young daughters. The AICWA, led by president Suresh Gupta, has now written to Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis demanding an FIR against Bhansali, a compensation of Rs. 1 crore for the family, and a high-level investigation into what happened on that set.

What makes Gupta’s statement particularly striking is not just the anger in his words but the pattern he is drawing attention to. He claims this is not an isolated tragedy, alleging that workers lost their lives on the sets of Devdas and Padmaavat as well. Whether every detail of those claims holds up to scrutiny is a matter for investigators, but the broader point — that on-set safety for daily wage workers in Indian cinema is chronically underprioritised — is one that deserves serious attention regardless of which filmmaker is involved. The language Gupta used, calling it “murder,” is legally charged and deliberately provocative, designed to force the issue into criminal territory rather than letting it be quietly settled with compensation cheques.

And that brings us to a tension that South Asian audiences know all too well. Bhansali’s productions are legendary for their scale, their detail, their obsessive artistry. Sets that recreate entire Mughal courts. Costumes that take months to hand-stitch. But the same ambition that produces visual poetry can also create conditions where shoots run through the dead of night, where workers are pushed under pressure, and where safety protocols get treated as optional inconveniences. Bhansali Productions reportedly offered Rs. 40 lakhs as compensation to the family — a gesture that critics argue is both inadequate and beside the point when the real question is accountability.

It is also worth noting the class dynamic here. Suresh Gupta put it plainly — you will never hear that a big producer or a top-billed actor died on a film set. It is always the worker. The person whose name will never appear in an end credit. The person whose family does not have a publicist to tell their story. For South Asian diaspora audiences in Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US who grew up watching Bollywood as a celebration of culture and community, the reality of these invisible workers can feel jarring. But it is part of the same industry.

At the time of writing, neither Bhansali nor his production team has responded publicly to the AICWA’s latest statements. That silence will itself become part of the story as pressure builds from the association and, potentially, from the Maharashtra government. Love & War stars Ranbir Kapoor, Alia Bhatt, and Vicky Kaushal and carries enormous commercial expectations — which only raises the stakes of how this situation is handled.

Glamour and tragedy have always coexisted in Bollywood, but at what point does the industry stop treating worker deaths as unfortunate incidents and start treating them as the systemic failures they are — and who should be held responsible when they happen?