Veteran south Indian actor B V Radha passes away

Veteran Kannada film actor B V Radha, who was also known as Bengaluru Vijaya Radha, passed away during wee hours of Sunday following a heart attack. She was 70.

She was admitted to a private hospital at Kalyan Nagar here on Saturday after she suffered a heart attack around 3 pm. She did not respond to the treatment. She breathed her last around 1 am.

She is survived by daughter Dhanalakshmi.

Radha, a cancer survivor, was the wife of veteran filmmaker and actor, the late KSL Swamy ‘Ravee’, who died in October 2015. Swamy had donated his body to M S Ramaiah Medical College. The family members donated Radha’s body too to M S Ramaiah Medical College.

Born as Rajalakshmi in 1948 into a family of farmers in Bengaluru, Radha acted in over 250 films in Kannada and 50 in Tamil besides a few films in Telugu and Tulu.

She made her debut in 1964 in the Kannada film Navakoti Narayana starring Rajkumar. She shared the silver screen with legends such as M G Ramachandran, Sivaji Ganesan, N T Rama Rao, Gemini Ganesan, Akkineni Nageswara Rao and Jaishankar.

Radha’s most notable role in Tamil was Thazampoo in 1966.

Two of her films, Jambu Savari and Harakeya Kuri (1992) won her national awards. She had received Kanaka Ratna award from the Kanaka Gurupeetha at Tinthini in Kalaburagi district.