Shiney Ahuja

Shiney Ahuja (born 15 May 1975) is an Indian actor, who won the Filmfare Best Male Debut Award for Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi in 2003 and then followed with several hit films like Gangster, Woh Lamhe, Life in a Metro, Bhool Bhulaiyaa, And Welcome Back.

Shiney Ahuja was born in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, to Col. Suraj Prakash Ahuja, an officer of the Indian Army, and his wife Seema Ahuja. He has an elder sister who is settled in Texas.

Ahuja studied at numerous army schools across the country, wherever his father was posted, including several years at St. Xavier's School, Ranchi He excelled in football, volleyball and cricket. In particular, he was very fond of cricket and took coaching classes from Mr. Gursharan Singh at the National Stadium, New Delhi.

During this time he discovered an equally strong passion in Theatre and in Sports. It was this passion that would win him admission to Hansraj College, Delhi University, through the dramatics quota. He completed his engineering from RV College of Engineering Bengaluru. After a series of auditions, Shiney was among the three who got selected from over 300 aspirants. While in college, Shiney began to pursue acting seriously. He attended several acting workshops held at the National School of Drama, New Delhi. Later, he joined the theatre group 'Tag' where he met Barry John. Shortly thereafter, he joined Barry John’s Acting School in Delhi.

After completing college, Shiney secured his first commercial ad for Pepsi. This instantly brought him into consideration by the top ad agencies. Flooded with offers, Ahuja worked in over 40 ad films in that year, including Cadburys and Citibank. He also featured in the music video ‘Pyar ho Gaya’ for the British-Asian band "Stereo Nation."

In the same year, Sudhir Mishra was auditioning for a film by Pritish Nandy Communications, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi.Sudhir saw Shiney in the Pepsi commercial and called him to audition for Kay Kay’s character – Sidharth Tyabji. Upon Shiney’s request, Mishra also auditioned him for the role of Vikram Malhotra. Shiney was selected from over 200 aspirants for the role of Vikram Malhotra and made his acting debut in the film Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi.

The film went on to win critical acclaim, and was screened at as many as 12 film festivals over 6 months. These included film festivals at Turkey, Estonia, River to River (Florence), Berlin, Edinburgh, Washington, Dallas, India (Goa), Bite The Mango festival (Bradford, UK), the Commonwealth festival (Manchester), and the Pacific Rim festival (California). The film was released commercially in 2005 with minimal publicity but a national footprint across India. Ahuja swept away several best actor (debut) awards given for the year.

Thereafter, he played the lead role in Mahesh Bhatt's Gangster, a popular commercial movie genre and Woh Lamhe opposite Kangana Ranaut. Other films followed including Life in a Metro, Bhool Bhulaiyaa.Two of his films, Ek Accident with co-star Soha Ali Khan and Har Pal with Preity Zinta are yet to be released.

He was seen in the horror film Ghost (2012), which was a flop at the box office. After three years he came in a cameo appearance in Welcome Back (2015)

In 2015, Shiney was cast in Anees Bazmee's Welcome Back co-starring John Abraham, Shruti Hassan, Anil Kapoor, Nana Patekar, Naseeruddin Shah, Dimple Kapadia and Paresh Rawal.

In June 2009, Ahuja was arrested on charges of raping, detaining, and threatening his 19-year-old domestic help. He was booked under Section 376 (rape), and Section 506 (threat to kill) of the IPC.

In 2011, he was sentenced to seven years of prison for raping his housemaid. However, he was later acquitted when the domestic help backtracked.