What is former actor Shiney Ahuja up to now a days?

WEB DESK: Once the brooding face of early-2000s Bollywood, Shiney Ahuja seems to have traded film sets for fabric shelves, or so the whispers go. Unconfirmed reports claim that the former actor, now in his early fifties, lives a quiet life somewhere in the Philippines, running a small garment store far removed from Mumbai’s glare.

Born in Delhi to an Army family, Ahuja began his career in advertising, a young man with the kind of charm casting directors notice instantly. After over 40 commercials and a music video stint, he caught filmmaker Sudhir Mishra’s attention, earning a breakthrough role in Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2005). Stardom soon followed with Gangster, Woh Lamhe, and Life in a… Metro, cementing him as one of the decade’s most promising talents. The news spread when an X user shared a tweet stating the above.

But in 2009, it all collapsed. Ahuja’s arrest on rape charges jolted Bollywood. Convicted two years later and sentenced to seven years in prison, a verdict he maintained was unjust — his career never recovered. A brief reappearance in Welcome Back (2015) couldn’t undo the damage.

And then, he vanished.

For years, Ahuja’s whereabouts have been a mystery, until social media sleuths began sharing photos of a man in Manila who bears an uncanny resemblance to the fallen star. Some Reddit users even claim he’s reinvented himself as a shopkeeper dealing in women’s wear, far from the industry that once celebrated him.

No official confirmation has surfaced, and perhaps that’s just how he prefers it. Whether he’s really running a boutique under an alias or simply living out his days in anonymity, the story of Shiney Ahuja now reads like a tragic screenplay, one where fame fades, scandal lingers, and redemption remains a rumour.