Sridevi's funeral in Mumbai tomorrow

FANS and film personalities will have the chance to pay their last respects to actress Sridevi in Mumbai tomorrow (28) after a chartered aircraft carrying her body landed in Mumbai tonight (27).

A statement from her family said the funeral is scheduled for tomorrow at 3.30 pm local time.

Sridevi’s coffin will be kept at the Sports Club Garden in Lokhandvala Complex in Andheri, where people can pay their last respects from 9.30 am to 12.30 pm tomorrow.

Earlier in the day today, the Dubai Public Prosecutor’s Office said it had concluded its investigation into the sudden death of the actress late on Saturday (23). The 54-year-old accidentally drowned following loss of consciousness, the Dubai police said. Sridevi was in the city to attend a family wedding, along with her husband and younger daughter.

In a career spanning five decades, Sridevi acted in 300 films and was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth-highest civilian honour in 2013.

Born Shree Amma Yanger Ayyapan in Tamil Nadu state, she started acting at the age of four, appearing in several Tamil and Telugu language films in the 1960-1980s and eventually dropping out of school for a career in the movies.

Sridevi made her Bollywood debut in 1979 with Solva Sawan (16th spring), but it was in 1983, with Balu Mahendra's Sadma (Shock) that she made her mark in the Hindi film industry.

That year, she also acted with Jeetendra in K Raghavendra Rao's blockbuster Himmatwala (The Courageous One), cementing her place as one of Bollywood's top actresses.

Sridevi was known for her on-screen vivacity and energy, playing memorable characters in films such as Chaalbaaz (Trickster) and Shekhar Kapur's Mr India in the 1980s and 1990s. She charmed audiences in female-centric hits at a time when the Indian film industry relied on male actors for box-office success.

Sridevi took a break from films soon after she married producer Boney Kapoor in 1996. She made a successful return to the big screen 15 years later in Gauri Shinde's English Vinglish (2012), playing a housewife taking English-language lessons. Her last screen appearance was in Mom (2017), as a mother avenging her daughter's rape.