Nana Patekar dies at 75 after a 2:30 am message from his Goa home

Nana Patekar died in the early hours of Thursday in Goa, at 75, after telling a friend at about 2:30 am that he was unwell. Doctors at Manipal Hospital declared him dead at 5:20 am. First responders had already started cardiac massage at the house and continued CPR for about 45 minutes. His son, Malhar Patekar, confirmed the death to The Indian Express from Pune and said the funeral would be held there.

Dr Shekhar Salkar, chief of oncology at Manipal Hospital, gave the timeline to ANI and to reporters. Patekar sent the message around 2:30 am. The friend did not see it at once. He reached the house around 4 am and found the actor sweating and gasping, with pain on the left side of the chest. A caretaker called an ambulance. The emergency team started chest compressions in the house because he was unresponsive, moved him to hospital still under CPR, and arrived at about 4:20 am. Salkar said he was brought dead. Efforts continued until 5:20 am.

Why the death is a medico-legal case

Patekar was not a registered patient at Manipal. Salkar said the hospital did not know whether he had a history of heart disease or was on tablets. Because the death happened outside the hospital's ordinary records, staff filed a medico-legal case and informed the police. The body was taken to Goa Medical College for a post-mortem. That procedure will fix the formal cause. Until it reports, the clinical description on the record is cardiac arrest, not a named disease.

The gap between the message and the arrival matters for anyone reading the early accounts. About ninety minutes passed between the 2:30 am text and the friend at the door. Another twenty minutes passed before the hospital. Salkar's account does not say the delay decided the outcome. It does fix the sequence that neighbours and the family will be asked about: message, arrival, unresponsive patient, CPR on the way, declaration at 5:20 am.

The career the obituaries are counting

Patekar worked in Hindi and Marathi cinema for more than four decades and was known for a harsh, clipped delivery that directors used when a character had to sound impatient with the room. He won National Film Awards for acting in Krantiveer (1994) and for his supporting part in Agni Sakshi (1996), and a third National award as producer of the Marathi film Paheli (the 1980s title, not the later Shah Rukh Khan film). He received the Padma Shri. Those are the official marks. The parts audiences still name are different: the vengeful policeman in Krantiveer, the obsessive officer in Parinda (1989), the landlord in Salaam Bombay!, and the comic tyrant he played opposite Amitabh Bachchan in Kohram and later in Welcome.

He also directed. Prahaar (1991), which he co-wrote and starred in, was built around a commando unit and drew on his own interest in the armed forces. During the 1999 Kargil war he publicly offered to go to the front and spoke with the defence minister of the day. The offer was not taken up as a posting. It stayed part of the public record of how he talked about soldiering, and it is already being repeated in Thursday's notices.

His relationship with the industry was uneven. He walked off sets, argued with directors in public, and in 2018 faced an allegation of inappropriate behaviour on a film set from Tanushree Dutta, which he denied. The allegation returned whenever a new film of his opened. It will sit next to the award list in any full account, and it is not settled by his death.

What is fixed, and what is not

The fixed facts on Thursday morning are the clock and the place. A message at 2:30 am. A friend at the house around 4 am. Arrival at Manipal around 4:20 am. Death declared at 5:20 am. A son in Pune arranging a funeral there. A body at Goa Medical College for post-mortem because the hospital treated the case as medico-legal.

What is not fixed is the medical history. Salkar said the hospital had no chart on whether Patekar was a known cardiac patient. The post-mortem is the document that will answer that. Until it does, the accurate sentence is the one the hospital used: cardiac arrest, cause not yet stated, after 45 minutes of attempted revival.