08 February,2026 07:49 PM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Celina Jaitly with her brother
Actress Celina Jaitly, who has been going through multiple legal battles at once, recently opened up about her marriage and her brother's detention in the UAE. The actress revealed that she left her marriage in Austria to bring her brother back from the UAE.
"I got to know around September 29. The call came at around nine at night. I was living in Austria then. At first, I thought my brother was playing a prank. For an hour, I dismissed it as one of his stupid jokes," Jaitly told PTI.
Describing how she was already trapped in a very bad marriage in Austria, she says, "I was in a very abusive and bad marriage. But when you have children, you do everything to make that work. When you don't have parents, when you no longer have your assets, you do everything to keep your marriage going, specifically for your children."
She added that she was already at breaking point when she got her brother's news. "I took that decision in the middle of battle, without dragging my children into it. Knowing that if I don't leave Austria, I won't be able to stand up for my brother. At 1 o'clock in the night, with hardly any money, a ticket bought on a credit card, I left Austria and came to India," she shares.
"Nobody really came forward to support. In my darkest hour, I realised I had neither friends nor family in my immediate circle. Instead, complete strangers came and stood by me like a rock," she shares.
When asked about her brother's work, Celina says, "After he retired from the army, he joined his wife in the middle east, she had formed a company called the Matiti Group which had various verticals from information technology to cyber security to risk management and HR services and Vikrant went on to join her firm just like any other veteran."
Major (Retd) Vikrant Kumar Jaitly has been under "arbitrary detention" in the United Arab Emirates for the last 17 months, said Jaitly. The retired Special Forces officer and former UN peacekeeper was picked up from a mall in September 2024. For nearly nine months, his whereabouts remained unknown with no formal arrest on record and no access to legal representation, she said.
Through legal and grievance channels, it was confirmed in mid-2025 that Vikrant had been shifted to the Al Wathba detention centre in Abu Dhabi.
The Delhi High Court has since passed an order allowing a UAE-based legal firm to represent him, a move Jaitly has described as a long-awaited breakthrough. As she shared the update on social media, voices from the film industry also rallied behind her, including actor Preity Zinta, who publicly expressed support.
Calling herself a "fourth-generation armed forces daughter", Jaitly said she has taken the matter to the highest levels of Indian leadership, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "My brother is an Indian soldier," she said. "He cannot be left in arbitrary detention."
(With inputs from PTI)
