Roadies winner Shweta Mehta opens up about life-threatening accident, being barred from Khatron Ke Khiladi

Shweta Mehta, who won Roadies season 15, has opened up about a near-fatal accident which left her bed-ridden and out-of-work, and depleted her savings. Shweta suffered seven fractures in her neck, and damaged three bones in her spinal cord in an accident at a trampoline park in Gujarat.

In an interview, she spoke about the hardships that she had to face, and how she bounced back. She said that the journey has been ‘bigger’ than anything she’s done in her life, including winning Roadies. She revealed that because of her accident, casting directors would hesitate about hiring her. Giving the example of the adventure-based reality show Khatron Ke Khiladi, she told a leading daily, “Khatron Ke Khiladi was something that I really wanted to do and I got a call also from someone and even he asked me the same thing. He asked, ‘Shweta we want a medical certificate because we think you won’t be able to perform’.”

She said, “I was at the peak of my career. A charming, beautiful, young girl doing various brand endorsements, music videos and I was working on another reality show. I wanted to do a Punjabi movie, there were so many things in the pipeline. And suddenly I lost out on everything. I lost everything, all my future projects within a month.”

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Shweta said that she was surprised that ‘nobody came forward’ to help her, and that some people even returned to endorse the trampoline park’s safety even though she was in the process of filing a lawsuit against it.

She continued, “But honestly I fought a lot, I am from a middle class family, I did not have any compensation, whatever savings I had I used it all on my treatment. There were projects, endorsement lineup, there was no money flowing in my account. I had used all my money. Secondly I was fighting with all the influential people. They also warned me that they would hurt my parents. I just had to let that go… I was supposed to have ₹20 lakh in my account by this year as per my plan but I had zero balance in my account.”

Also read: When Roadies aspirant told guest judge Mika Singh ‘aapki soch galat hai’. Watch

She said that for months, she’d hate looking at herself in the mirror, because she was in a neck brace. But after three months, her mother got her some ‘shiny studs’ and decorated her neck brace. “That gave me a lot of confidence,” she said.