3 min readNew DelhiFeb 14, 2026 05:34 PM IST
Raju Shrestha, popularly known as Master Raju, was among the most recognisable child stars of his time, having shared screen space with Bollywood’s biggest names, including Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Jeetendra and Amitabh Bachchan. While he has fond memories of most of his co-stars, he recently recalled that he was “terrified” of working with Moushumi Chatterjee.
Speaking to Siddharth Kannan, Master Raju, who began his career at the age of three in 1969, recalled his first collaboration with Moushumi in 1975. “If someone asks me who was the toughest to work with, I will say Moushumi Chatterjee. I never understood her as an actress in the first place. She never worked on her diction and delivered her lines with a Bengali accent. I never liked her,” he said. He was 9.
‘Moushumi Chatterjee started pinching me, I was crying’
He elaborated, “We were making a film called Do Jhooth. It starred Vinod Mehra and Moushumi Chatterjee. I was quite active in films then. It was my first time working with her. There was a scene where she was dropping me off at boarding school and I was supposed to cry in protest.”
According to Raju, things took an unexpected turn during the shoot. “She assumed I wouldn’t cry and started pinching me. I was very young. She had long nails, and it hurt badly. I was ready with glycerine, but when she pinched me, I began crying for real. I was professional enough not to miss my dialogues, but once the scene was cut, I cried even more. I showed my mother that she had scratched me with her nails. My mother complained to the director, who confronted her. She said, ‘I thought he wouldn’t cry. To avoid a retake, I pinched him.’”
‘I was badly hurt, she smiled and walked away’
Raju said a similar incident occurred in 1978 when they worked together again on Tumhari Kasam, which starred Jeetendra and Moushumi. “There was a scene where she had to drag me home while beating me and then throw me onto a bed without a mattress. I requested her to push me gently and said I would manage the fall myself. She agreed, but then she hit me for real and threw me hard. I was badly hurt. My bones ached, and I cried a lot. I even asked her, ‘Aunty, what’s wrong with you?’ She just smiled and walked away,” he recalled.
The experience left a lasting impact on a 12-year-old Raju. “I was traumatised. Every time I was told we had a film with Moushumi, I would feel scared. I had my worst experiences with her,” he said.
