Akanksha Chamola: Gaurav Khanna Called Her Bisexuality “Hot”
Akanksha Chamola Gaurav Khanna divorce
For two months, Akanksha Chamola has been the subject of the conversation rather than a participant in it. That flipped this week.
The Indian television actor — whose sexuality was announced to a streaming audience of millions by someone who wasn’t her — finally told the story in her own words, in an interview with Mid-Day. The headline everyone ran with was about her estranged husband, Anupamaa and Bigg Boss 19 star Gaurav Khanna.
He knew before they married in 2016, she said. He didn’t flinch. In fact, by her account, he called it “a very hot thing.”
Then she said the part that actually matters, and almost nobody put in a headline: most men react exactly that way.
What Akanksha Chamola Actually Told Mid-Day
Chamola’s framing was matter-of-fact, not confessional. She was bisexual before her marriage, she said. She told Gaurav. He was fine with it.
And she drew a hard line around what that did and didn’t mean for the marriage that followed. “I will not cheat on my husband,” she said, describing a choice to commit to one person and stay there.
She also pushed back on the idea that any of this is exotic. She described arriving at a point where she now identifies as asexual, and pointed out that plenty of straight women’s desire shifts over a lifetime without anyone convening a panel about it. Bisexual, then married, now asexual — she framed it as a sequence, not a scandal.
She Didn’t Come Out. She Was Outed.
Here is the detail that most coverage buries, and it changes the shape of the entire story.
Lock Upp: Sach Ya Sazaa — the second season of Ekta Kapoor’s reality format, now on Netflix — hands every contestant three personal secrets that function as lifelines. Another contestant can burn one by revealing it. The prisoner then has to confirm it on camera or forfeit the lifeline.
Contestant Shreya Kalra played that card on Chamola. And Chamola later said Kalra hadn’t heard it from her at all — she had picked it up backstage.
So the reveal was not a coming out. It was a game mechanic. A woman’s sexuality was spent like currency by a stranger who overheard it near a green room, on a show engineered to make exactly that happen.
Chamola, visibly shaken in the episode, chose to confirm it and explain herself rather than deny it. She said she had been in relationships with women before her marriage, that they weren’t physically intimate, and that the pull was real. “I like women; it is my safe space,” she said. In Hindi, she put it plainly: “Main shaadi se pehle bisexual thi.”
“Very Hot” Is Not the Same Thing as “Accepted”
Now back to the line that made this week’s headlines.
A husband who shrugged and said fine, that’s hot is, in the arithmetic of Indian primetime television, a good outcome. Chamola clearly reads it that way, and she’s not wrong about the alternative.
But listen to what she said next. She noted that men in general find bisexuality attractive, and said she doesn’t understand why people can’t simply accept it.
Those are two different things sitting in one sentence, and Chamola put her finger on the gap without belabouring it. Being found hot is not being accepted. It’s being consumed. The bisexual woman as a fantasy is welcome in almost every culture on earth. The bisexual woman as a person with a history, a preference and a boundary is a much harder sell.
Ask any bisexual woman in London, Toronto or Los Angeles and you’ll hear the same complaint in a different accent: the identity is treated as an accessory to someone else’s desire until the moment it becomes inconvenient, at which point it’s treated as instability.
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The Divorce That Set All of This in Motion
None of this landed in a vacuum. Chamola arrived on Lock Upp 2 carrying a bigger reveal.
On the premiere, she confirmed that she and Gaurav Khanna were divorcing — and that they had already been living apart for roughly a year without going public. She was careful about the framing: mutual decision, no bad blood, still in touch, simply incompatible about the future they each wanted.
She later said her decision not to have children sat at the centre of it. She had been open to motherhood at first, she explained, then came to understand it wasn’t for her.
The couple met on a shoot, dated, and married on 24 November 2016 in Khanna’s hometown of Kanpur across a three-day celebration packed with television colleagues. For nearly a decade they were one of the industry’s most admired pairs, and they had swatted away breakup rumours before. The announcement genuinely blindsided their audience.
Where Gaurav Khanna Stands
Khanna’s response has been, by any measure, the class act of this news cycle.
Asked by paparazzi shortly after the announcement, he wished her well, said he was standing by her, and hoped she’d win the show. On another occasion he referred to her with unguarded affection: “Meri biwi hai yaar.”
He has not contradicted anything she has said about their marriage, and he has not commented publicly on the sexuality reports at all. In an industry where estranged spouses routinely trade statements through friendly reporters, that silence reads less like avoidance and more like restraint.
It’s worth remembering the platform he’s speaking from. Khanna won Celebrity MasterChef India in 2025 and then took Bigg Boss 19 the same year — he is, right now, among the most bankable faces on Hindi television. He could dominate this narrative if he wanted to. He hasn’t tried.
Gaurav Khanna’s Entry Is What Broke Her Game
There’s one more piece the Lock Upp audience saw play out in real time.
Khanna entered the jail briefly to meet her. Chamola has since said that during that meeting she was told something about her family situation back home that she hadn’t known — and it wrecked her focus. “That is what shattered me,” she said, describing the moment.
Her gameplay changed noticeably afterwards, a shift host Farah Khan flagged directly. Chamola explained that her confidence in public has always rested on her family knowing and accepting what she does. Take that footing away mid-competition and the performance goes with it.
Will Any of This Cost Akanksha Chamola Work?
Chamola addressed the career question head-on, and refused the premise.
Casting should turn on craft and fit, she said. If she’s right for a role, she should be in the running for it, and her sexuality has no business in that calculation. She also brushed off the idea that speaking openly would sink her on television, noting that the entertainment industry has always had people of every orientation working in it.
Someone suggested she’d now find more work in OTT and web projects than on traditional TV. Rather than treat that as a demotion, she said she’d welcome it.
That’s a shrewd read of the market. Indian streaming has been considerably more willing than saas-bahu primetime to write queer characters as people rather than punchlines, and a known, experienced actor with a public identity is an asset there, not a liability.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Akanksha Chamola?
She’s an Indian television actor with more than a decade in Hindi TV, known for Swaragini – Jodein Rishton Ke Sur, Santoshi Maa, Bhootu, Yeh Hai Aashiqui and Kaise Mujhe Tum Mil Gaye. She is currently a contestant on Lock Upp Season 2.
Are Akanksha Chamola and Gaurav Khanna divorced?
They have announced they are divorcing. Chamola revealed on the Lock Upp 2 premiere that they had already been living separately for about a year and described the decision as mutual and amicable.
What did Gaurav Khanna say about her bisexuality?
Khanna has not commented publicly. Chamola told Mid-Day that she disclosed it to him before their 2016 marriage and that he accepted it, adding that he called it “a very hot thing.”
How did the reveal happen on Lock Upp Season 2?
Contestant Shreya Kalra disclosed it during the show’s secrets format, using it as one of Chamola’s three lifelines. Chamola later said Kalra had overheard the information backstage rather than being told directly.
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