Jitendra
Shastri, the actor who played Usmaan in Pankaj Tripathi-Ali Fazal starrer OTT
show Mirzapur, has died. Shastri, who was a big name in Hindi theatre, was involved
in ‘alternate’ cinema projects. One of his most memorable performances was in
Black Friday, the Anurag Kashyap directorial based on Hussain Zaidi’s book,
Black Friday: The True Story of The Bombay Bomb Blasts.

Who was Jitendra
Shastri?

Jitendra
Shastri was born on June 5, 1957 in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain. At the time of his
death, he was 65 years old. A graduate from the National School of Drama (NSD),
the premier Indian theatre school that boasts of alumni such as Om Puri and Naseeruddin
Shah, Jitendra came to be known as ‘Jitu bhaiya’ in the Hindi theatre circuit.
Some of his most successful theatrical productions include Kaid-E-Hayat and
Sundari.

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In films,
Jitendra Shastri usually scored small but meaty roles. Shastri was impressive
with his performance in Black Friday. He also featured in Asoka, the Shah Rukh
Khan-starrer directed by Santosh Sivan. Shastri was a member of the cast in
Sanjay Dutt-Urmila Matondkar-starrer Daud, the 1997 action-adventure directed
by Ram Gopal Varma. Lajja and Charas are some of Shastri’s other films.

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Jitendra Shastri’s
performance in India’s Most Wanted also earned him renown. Released in 2019,
the film revolves around a group of five intelligence officers who take on a
top-secret mission to capture the world’s most wanted terrorists.

Tributes
for Jitendra Shastri

Jitendra
Shastri’s death saw a wave of grief spread in the Hindi film industry. Sanjay
Mishra, also an NSD alumnus, posted an old video on Instagram of the two of
them. He captioned the video in Hindi saying: “Jeetu bhai if you were here, you
would say something like this: Names remain on mobile phones but people go out
of network. You are out of the world, but will always remain in my network of
mind and heart.”