Prateik Smita Patil is the late actress Smita Patil and politician-turned-actor Raj Babbar's son. Unfortunately, Smita Patil passed away during childbirth, and Prateik has always been vocal about how it shall always be the harshest truth in his life.
Recently, in a conversation with Zoom, Prateik made a revelation that he got to know very recently about Shabana Azmi and Javed Akhtar wanting to adopt him. The actor said that it was complicated after his mother's passing away, but he could have been Farhan Akhtar's stepbrother.
Prateik shared, "I recently found out Shabana (Azmi) Ji and Javed (Akhtar) Sahab wanted to adopt me after my mother passed away. It was kind of complicated. I could've been Farhan's (Akhtar) stepbrother. I find these new things about me all the time. Aur kya hai, batao (what else is there, tell me). It's also very overwhelming. Ye hota toh main pata nahi kaisi zindagi jee raha hota (If this had happened, I don't know what kind of a life I'd be leading now)."
He added, "I'm very grateful for all the love she gets, and all the goodwill she has in the industry, among all her colleagues and friends. Shabana Ji was definitely one of them, along with Javed Sahab. Amit Ji (Amitabh Bachchan) has always been very kind and supportive. I think everybody from her time, everybody she shared with, Naseer Sahab (Naseeruddin Shah), Ratna (Pathak Shah) Ji, and the late great Shyam Benegal. That was a different era. I recently found out about myself, I was conceived on the sets of Mirch Masala (1987)."
Prateik got emotional as he spoke about how he had heard numerous things about his childhood, that were deeply disturbing. From being in a custody fight to people wanting to adopt him, he was too little to fathom what was going on. But he is deeply grateful to his mother's contemporaries in the industry who looked out for him.