Suspicious death? Tamil Nadu police begin probe into singer Vani Jayaram’s end

Chennai: Playback singer Vani Jayaram was found dead in her home on Saturday, the Tamil Nadu Police have opened a case for a “suspicious death” related to her death.

Vani Jayaram, after the passing away of her husband Jayaram in 2018, was living alone in her residence at Haddows road in Chennai.

A maidservant Malarkodi, who used to do daily chores at her residence, arrived at the home at 11 a.m. and even after the repeated ringing of the bell, there was no response from inside.

She immediately alerted Vani Jayaram’s sister Uma and both of them entered the house with duplicate keys and found her dead on the floor of her bedroom. She had bruise marks on her forehead. Police were informed and her body was taken to Kilpauk hospital, Chennai for postmortem.

However, a forensic team of Tamil Nadu police is conducting an inspection at the residence of Vani Jayaram.

When contacted, Shekhar Deshmukh, DCP, Triplicane told IANS that the police are conducting an investigation and further details will be known only after the postmortem report comes.

Vani, as she was popularly known, made her Malayalam debut in 1973 by recording the solo song ‘Sourayudhathil Vidarnnoru’ composed by Salil Chowdhary for the film ‘Swapnam’.

Vani worked with leading Malayalam composers, including M.K. Arjunan, G. Devarajan, M.S. Viswanathan, R.K. Shekhar, V. Dakshinamoorthy, M.S. Baburaj, Shyam, A.T. Ummer, M.B. Sreenivasan, K. Raghavan, Jerry Amaldev, Kannur Rajan, Johnson and Raveendran.

Vani has sung in a number of languages including Odia. She has lent voice to a number of super hit Odia film songs of the seventies like – Megha Barasila Tupuru Tapuru (Sesha Shravana), Na Ja Sajani (Bandhu Mohanty), Mukunda Murari (Mukti).

Her best came out when she collaborated with Arjunan and Sreekumaran Thampi and she was at ease with the new generation of composers and rendered songs till a few years back.

(Inputs from IANS)