The funeral of veteran Tollywood actor Kaikala Satyanarayana was held with full state honours in Hyderabad on Saturday, December 24. The funeral was held at the Jubilee Hills Mahaprasthanam. The actor, who was 87 years old, died due to age-related ailments and was undergoing treatment since last year. However, in the early hours of Friday, December 23, the actor breathed his last. Kaikala Satyanarayana was a versatile actor with a career spanning six decades, during which he acted in over 750 films.
Following his death, Cinematography Minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav passed an order announcing that the actor’s last rites would be conducted with full state honours. The funeral procession began from Satyanarayana’s home in Film Nagar to the Mahaprasthanam in Jubilee Hills on Saturday morning. The last rites were held in the presence of his family members and wellwishers. Satyanrayana’s son Kaikala Lakshmi Narayana has conducted the last rites.
Satyarayana’s death came as a shock to the Telugu film industry, with several personalities offering their condolences. Actors including Chiranjeevi, Pawan Kalyan, Venkatesh, Brahmanandam, Rajendra Prasad, Nagendra Babu, Jeevitha Rajasekhar, Radha, Tanikella Bharani, and many others paid their floral tributes to the veteran actor on Friday.
Satyanarayana was born in 1935 in Krishna district in Andhra Pradesh, and began his journey in the film industry with the 1959 film Sipayi Koothuru. He was last seen in the 2019 film Maharshi starring Mahesh Babu and Pooja Hegde. Among the hundreds of films that he was a part of as a supporting actor, his famous roles include that of Yamadharma Raju in films like Yamagola and Yamaleela. His toher films include Lava Kusa, Narthanasala, and Kurukshethram among others.
In 1996, Satyanarayana also forayed into politics and was elected as a Member of Parliament from the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), representing Machilipatnam district in Andhra Pradesh.