Actress Sukumari (74) passed away on Tuesday in Chennai. It’s learnt that few days back she had suffered major burn injuries after her saree caught fire while lighting a lamp at pooja room in her home. Since then she had been given treatment at a private hospital. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalitha visited her in the hospital last week. She expressed her sadness on the death of the actress. Sukumari is the wife of yester year director Late A Bheem Singh and is survived with a son Dr Suresh. Her body will be cremated on Wednesday in Chennai.
Although Sukumari acted in several Telugu films like ‘Mangalya Balam’ and ‘Palleturi Bava’, she got well noted as Mahesh Babu’s grandmother in ‘Murari’ among the generation today. Her last film in Telugu was Varun Sandesh’s ‘Kudirithe Cuppu Coffee’. Born in Nagarkoil in 1938, Sukumari entered the movie industry as a child artist and did more than 2,000 including her mother-tongue Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Bengali, Oriya, etc. She was a trained classical dancer, hence with passion on films she made her acting debut through Tamil Nadu’s Late Chief Minister Annadurai’s ‘Oru Iruvar’. Sukumari was honoured with Padmasree Award in 2003 and she won national award as supporting actress in 2011 for her performance in Tamil/Malayalam film ‘Namma Gramam’ (Our Village).
