MUMBAI, Sept 12: Veteran film, television and theatre actor and Padma Shri Tom Alter is battling cancer. The renowned actor's family shared the news on Monday, a week after he was admitted to Mumbai's Saifee Hospital.

Alter, 67, has had a relapse of a squamous cell carcinoma. He is under treatment and expert supervision at Saifee Hospital. His family has asked for privacy as the treatment continues.  
Alter, a gold medal diploma graduate in acting in 1974 from the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, has acted in over 300 movies apart from numerous TV shows, perhaps most famously as the gangster Keshav Kalsi in the hit soap opera Junoon which ran for a record five years during the 1990s.

In addition to acting, Alter has also ventured into direction and was a sports journalist in the late 1980s to early 1990s. He was the first person to interview Sachin Tendulkar for TV when the cricketer was yet to debut for India. Alter has written three books, one non-fiction and two fictions, and in 2008 was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri by the Indian government in recognition for his services to the field of arts and cinema.