Aamir Khan's brother Faisal apologises after severing ties with family: 'I said bad things...'

After months of publicly accusing his family of mistreating him, former actor Faisal Khan has made a dramatic U-turn.

The estranged brother of Bollywood star Aamir Khan has now issued a public apology to his mother, siblings and other family members, expressing regret over airing their private disputes in public. Faisal also said he has received a clean bill of mental health from a government hospital, challenging earlier claims that he was battling a mental illness.

Faisal Khan apologises to Aamir Khan and his family

Speaking on Ujjawal Trivedi's podcast, Faisal began by apologising to his mother and sister for the statements he made against them.

"I first want to apologise to my Ammi that I made the mistake of saying everything in public. I want to apologise to Ammi and Nikhat because a man tends to say it all whatever he’s been feeling and suppressing for all this while. I’d gone overboard with Nikhat and her husband Santosh Hegde, which I shouldn’t have said at all. It was very wrong," said Faisal.

He also extended an olive branch to Aamir Khan, saying he hopes their relationship can move forward.

"I’ve realized my mistake now, hence asking for forgiveness. I also said bad things about Aamir. I just want to continue with our decision to be on good terms going forward. I wish our relationship becomes even stronger," he added.

Faisal also revisited the long-running debate over his mental health. Referring to the period when his family maintained he was undergoing psychiatric treatment, he claimed that a later assessment at a government hospital reached a different conclusion.

"That was a different phase. When my family took me to the doctor, maybe their diagnosis was incorrect. When the court sent me to a government hospital, I got a clean chit there. It’s possible that some doctors misled the family. I want my family to trust, believe, and understand them instead of bringing up bad blood from the past," he said.

According to Faisal, his relatives have not always shared the same opinion about his condition.

"There are some members in the family who go with what the doctor said, but there are some who trust what I’m saying. My elder sister Nikhat has told me multiple times that I don’t have schizophrenia. Ammi and Santosh have also said that," he claimed.

Questioning why he continues to be viewed through the lens of his past, he added, "If you keep thinking this guy is mad, then how will you trust him? How can a mad man make a company of his own? There’ve been no instances of me misbehaving in public either."

Faisal made his acting debut in the 1988 film Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, directed by his cousin Mansoor Khan and starring Aamir Khan. He was most recently seen in the 2022 Kannada action film Oppanda and made his directorial debut with the 2021 Hindi film Faactory.

A long-running family feud

Faisal's public apology marks a dramatic shift from the accusations he levelled against his family over the past few years.

He had repeatedly alleged that Aamir Khan and other family members wrongly portrayed him as mentally ill and subjected him to forced confinement and medication. Among his most serious claims was that Aamir kept him confined inside his Mumbai home for more than a year.

"Aur Aamir ne mujhe qaid kar diya tha ghar me ek saal. Mobile le liya, main bahar nahi jaa sakta. Bodyguard mere room ke bahar. Dawaiyan de rahe hain (Aamir had locked me inside the house for a year. My phone was taken, I couldn’t go out. There were bodyguards outside my room. I was given medicine)," Faisal had alleged.

The actor has consistently denied that he ever suffered from schizophrenia. After a court verdict in 2008, he said rumours about his mental health had been spread by his own family.

"Frankly, I was never ill… What has been said so far was speculative and spread by my elder brother, Aamir Khan, and other family members," he had said.

In a 2020 interview with Bollywood Hungama, Faisal expanded on those allegations, claiming, "When the family felt that I was depressed and had paranoid schizophrenia, they kept me under house arrest for one year and gave me forceful medication. It is illegal, but I was taking all this quietly because I thought that the family would realise at some point that if I am mad, I will show it in some way. I thought I should be patient till they come to their senses that they are troubling me for no reason."

The dispute reached another flashpoint last year when Faisal announced that he was severing all ties with the Khan family through a public notice. In the declaration, he said he would no longer be considered part of the family of his late parents, filmmaker Tahir Hussain and Zeenat Tahir Hussain, and would neither claim rights to their estate nor bear any liabilities connected to it.

His allegations prompted a rare joint statement from Aamir Khan and the extended Khan family, who rejected his version of events.

"We are distressed by Faisal's hurtful and misleading portrayal of his mother Zeenat Tahir Husain, his sister Nikhat Hegde, and his brother Aamir," the statement read. It added that decisions concerning Faisal "have been taken collectively as a family, in consultation with multiple medical professionals, and has been based on love, compassion, and a desire to support his emotional and psychological wellbeing."

The family also urged the media to treat the matter with sensitivity, requesting that it not be turned into "salacious, inflammatory and hurtful gossip."

The strained relationship between the brothers has also surfaced in discussions about Faisal's acting career. Speaking in 2021 about the failure of Mela (2000), which starred both brothers, Faisal recalled a candid conversation with Aamir.

"I had to bear the brunt. Aamir and I had this personal conversation. I didn't go into a discussion about why it flopped, he told me what he felt. He told me, 'You're not a good actor, you can't act, so you better start doing something else, you should think what you want to do in life.' So that was his reasoning," Faisal had said.