Guwahati: Veteran Bengali actor Pradip Mukherjee breathed his last at the age of 76 on Monday.
Mukherjee passed away at a hospital in Kolkata.
Mukherjee, who made the protagonist of Satyajit Ray’s “Jana Aranya” (The Middleman) immortal, had been hospitalised to a private hospital three days prior owing to a lung infection. He was shifted to a state-run hospital on Sunday.
His condition worsened there and he breathed his last today morning.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee expressed her sorrow over his passing in a statement in Bengali, saying, “His death left a huge gap. He had left his mark in Satyajit Ray’s Jana Aranya, Rituparno Ghosh’s Utsav, and Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s Dooratwa.”
The chief minister sent her condolences to the man’s loved ones.
Mukherjee had appeared in more than 40 movies, including Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s A Tale of a Naughty Girl (2002) and Rituparno Ghosh’s Hirer Angti (The Diamond Ring, 1992).
He debuted in the part of Somnath, the main character, in Ray’s Jana Aranya (1976), which marked the beginning of his acting career. Torulatar Bhoot (Ghost of Torulata Lake), his most recent film, was released in 2021.
Mukherjee also appeared in Sandip Ray’s Badsahi Angti (The Emperor’s Ring, 2014), Shakha Prasakha (Branches of a Tree, 1990), and Jekhane Bhooter Bhoy (Where Fear of Ghosts Lurks, 2012) films (Beware of Graveyard, 2010). His sole Hindi movie was Kahani 2: Durga Rani Singh by Sujoy Ghosh (2016).