Rekha's personal life has often been under the spotlight. Back in 1990, the actress met Delhi-based businessman Mukesh Aggarwal through friends, and the duo quickly decided to get married. It looked like the classic “settling down” moment after years of living in the glare of stardom.
But things did not unfold that way. On Rendezvous with Simi Garewal years later, when asked if it was an arranged marriage, Rekha said, “It wasn't love, for sure.” She even admitted that Mukesh felt like a “stranger.” That honesty summed up the mismatch.
The couple went on a honeymoon to London. It was there, Rekha later said, that she realised the “vast differences in our outlook and temperament.” Within months, the two filed for divorce. Speaking to Filmfare at the time, she clarified that divorce “was not my idea in the first place,” adding that Mukesh “broached it first.”
Sadly, soon after, Mukesh died by suicide. That turned Rekha into an easy target for gossip. She was casually labelled a “witch” and was made out to be responsible for his death. “A stage came in our relationship when both of us decided that our incompatibility was too much to overcome,” she explained, stressing that it was a mutual decision to part ways.
The criticism was relentless. Rekha eventually gave an interview titled I didn't kill Mukesh, where she tried to set the record straight. Yet, much like the way Rhea Chakraborty was treated after Sushant Singh Rajput's death decades later, the judgment was already heavy.
It took years for Rekha to openly reflect on that time. In her chat with Simi Garewal in 2004, she called it the period when she “really grew up.” As she put it, “It was, as morbid as it sounds, the best thing that ever happened to me because I got a crash course of what people are all about.”
Rekha also described the emotions she cycled through after Mukesh's death. “The initial shock and then denial… and later on, this intense anger and then you go on this self pity trip… then trying to understand it, in vain… and then, finally, of course, acceptance.”
Since then, Rekha has never remarried.
