Singer Vani Jairam, who was conferred with the Padma Bhushan on January 25 for her contribution to the field of Arts, has been found dead at her Chennai residence. Thousand Lights Police officials confirmed Jairam's passing. More details are awaited on the matter. Jairam broke onto the music scene with the song Bole Re Papihara from Jaya Bachchan's debut as a leading lady in the 1971 film Guddi. She has done playback for over a thousand Indian movies.
She has recorded over 10,000 songs across languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, and Bengali, among others. For 2023, the President has approved the conferment of 106 Padma awards, and Jairam was one of the recipients. The Padma Awards are conferred by the President at ceremonial functions which are held at the Rashtrapati Bhawan usually around March or April every year. Unfortunately, Jairam has passed away before receiving the honour.
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According to ANI, the singer's househelp, Malarkodi, had arrived for work as usual on Saturday, but when she did not receive any response, she alerted the singer's sister, Uma. After Uma and Malarkodi entered the house using a set of duplicate keys, they found the singer unconscious in her bedroom with bruises on her forehead. The police arrived and found her dead.
The report also suggests that the deceased's body was sent to Kilpauk Government Hospital. After postmortem, the mortal remains of veteran playback singer Vani Jairam were brought back to her residence from the hospital on Saturday evening.
(With PTI inputs)