Producer-director Jagmohan Mundhra passed away in Mumbai on Sunday. He was 62. Mundhra, who was hospitalised three days ago, was suffering from internal bleeding.
He had been unwell for some time and was rushed to Bombay Hospital last week. Mundhra was known for his film Provoked with Aishwarya Rai.
Unfortunately, he never worked with any big names after that. Mundhra tried to carve a niche for himself as a filmmaker by making films on sensitive issues, like physical assault, but could not sustain it. He was working on a film with Udita Goswami in the lead. Born on October 29, 1948 in Nagpur, Mundhra was known for issue-oriented films such as Vishkanya, Bawandar, Provoked, Apartment and Naughty@40.
An alumnus of IIT Bombay, Mundhra went to the US to study electrical engineering but switched to marketing studies, and wrote a comparative thesis on marketing practises of Hollywood and Bollywood.
After finishing his Ph.D, he also taught for a year at California State University. His stay in California brought him closer to Hollywood. In 1979, he decided to become a full-time filmmaker. He has over 30 films to his credit as a writer, producer, director, editor and actor. After his socially-relevant films, like Suraag and Kamla, he directed a string of horror and erotic thrillers in Hollywood, including The Jigsaw Murders (1988), Halloween Night (1988), Night Eyes (1990), LA Goddess (1993), Sexual Malice (1994) and Tales of the Kama Sutra 2: Monsoon (1998). Mundhra was planning a political satire for his next film, Kissa Kutte Ka, starring Tannishtha Chatterjee, Seema Biswas, Sarika and Raghubir Yadav.