'Sangeet has brought me nothing but shame and humiliation'

Pune cops found Sangeet Date living under the Wakad-Hinjewadi flyover. File pic

Marathi singer Arun Date has broken his silence on his son, Sangeet Date (48), days after mid-day reported that he had been reduced to living on the streets in Pune. Date revealed that he disowned his younger son last year after suffering repeated humiliation because of his debts and dishonest and reckless lifestyle - much of which is revealed in a letter from 2012.

On August 31, mid-day had reported that Pune cops found Sangeet living under the Wakad-Hinjewadi flyover and were shocked to discover that he was, in fact, the son of famed Bhavgeet singer Arun Date. At the time, he blamed his family for his misery, claiming that his father had lost his memory and his elder brother had grabbed all the family property (‘Top Marathi singer Arun Date loses memory, son left homeless').

Ashamed of his son
Now aged 83, Date has grown frail, still he insisted that it was not memory loss but Sangeet's own actions that led to his current state. "Sangeet has brought me nothing but shame and humiliation. For over two decades, I tolerated his misdeeds. His drinking habit, along with abusive and aggressive behaviour towards all the family members had taken a toll on us. We were mentally and physically stressed beyond limits," he told this reporter.

Things got so bad that Date wrote to Sangeet in 2012, demanding that he never try to contact him again or ask him for money. When even that didn't work, he went a step further in 2015, and publicly disowned his younger son through advertisements in several newspapers.

Dishonest past
Date gave mid-day a copy of the letter he wrote to Sangeet in 2012 to explain why the father-son relationship turned sour. In the letter, he wrote, "You have cheated various people, including our relatives and friends, for shocking reasons. They trusted you with their money because of my credibility. I had to pay them back with my hard-earned money. I do not know how many people you must have cheated without my knowledge. You have not even spared needy people who trusted you with their money during the serious illness of their dying son. Forget helping them (which you promised), you duped them in their testing times."

The senior citizen revealed that Sangeet had not even spared his own parents, selling their gold and shares without their knowledge, all to fuel his alcohol addiction and extravagant lifestyle. "He sold gold ornaments weighing close to 100 tolas without my knowledge. This gold was bought by my wife for me, and it had sentimental value as well," he said, adding, "He never contributed to any family responsibility, including my wife's long drawn illness or my bypass surgery."

Sangeet had earlier said that he had gone to Pune to start his own business with the money he got from selling his house in Bandra. He claimed that all the money was then robbed, and he was forced to live on the streets. But his father paints a very different picture: "I had brought you a flat in Bandra, but even that was sold by the bank to recover a loan you had taken from them. You still were left with crores of rupees - I have no idea what have you done with all the money."