Geetashree Sandhya Mukherjee
Sandhya Mukherjee
Background information
Born	Sandhya Mukherjee (1931-10-04)4 October 1931 Calcutta,Bengal Presidency, British Raj
Died	15 February 2022(2022-02-15) (aged 90) Kolkata, West Bengal, India
Genres	Playback singing
Occupations	Singer, composer
Spouse	Shyamal Gupta

Sandhya Mukhopadhyay singing "Gane more kon Indrodhonu"

Music composerAnupam Ghatak, LyricistGauriprasanna Majumdar, Singer Sandhya Mukhopadhyay

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Geetashree^[1][2]Sandhya Mukherjee (also spelledMukhopadhyay; 4 October 1931 – 15 February 2022) was an Indian playback singer and musician, specialising inBengali music. She receivedBanga Bibhushan, the highest civilian honour of the Indian state ofWest Bengal in 2011.^[3] She also won theNational Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer for her songs in the filmsJay Jayanti andNishi Padma in the year 1970.^[4]

Mukherjee was born inDhakuria,Calcutta, on 4 October 1931 to Narendranath Mukherjee, a railway official, and Hemprova Devi. She was the youngest of six children. Her grandfather was a police officer, and the family had lived in Dhakuria since 1911.^[5] She was married to noted lyristShyamal Gupta, until his death in 2010.^[6] She has a daughter named Soumi Sengupta.^[7]

Sandhya started her music training under the direction of Pandit Santosh Kumar Basu, Professor A T Kannan, and Professor Chinmoy Lahiri. However, herguru wasUstad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, followed by his son Ustad Munawar Ali Khan, under whom she mastered Indian classical music.^[8] According to Manorma Sharma, "Sandhya has been able to maintain her popularity as a classical vocalist even after acquiring the gloss and the glow of playback singing ..."^[8]

Though classically trained, the bulk of her work consists of Bengali modern songs. She began her career inMumbai singingHindi songs, starting with a song in the filmTaarana in 1950. She sang, as a playback singer, in 17 Hindi films. She decided to come back to and settle in her home cityKolkata in 1952 for personal reasons. She married Bengali poetShyamal Gupta in 1966. Gupta went on to write the lyrics for many of her songs.

Her best known collaboration is arguably with the Bengali singerHemanta Mukherjee with whom she sang numerous duets, primarily as playback for Bengali films. Hemanta and Sandhya became known as the voices behind the pairings of the Bengali superstarUttam Kumar and his numerous heroines, most notably being the actressSuchitra Sen, whose singing voice she became. BesidesHemanta Mukherjee's compositions, her largest body of work is with Robin Chattopadhyay and Nachiketa Ghosh.

During theBangladesh Liberation War she joined the mass movement among Indian Bengali artistes to raise money for the millions of refugees who had poured intoKolkata andWest Bengal to escape the fighting, and to raise global awareness for the cause of Bangladesh. She assisted Bangladeshi musicianSamar Das as he set up theSwadhin Bangla Betar Kendra, the clandestine radio station broadcasting to Bangladesh and recorded several patriotic songs for him. On the occasion of the release ofSheikh Mujibur Rahman, the imprisoned leader of the new country ofBangladesh, she released a songBangabandhu Tumi Phirey Ele. She later became one of the first foreign artists to visitDhaka, performing at an open-air concert in Paltan Maidan inDhaka to celebrate the firstEkushey February after Bangladeshi independence in 1971.

On 26 January 2022, on theRepublic Day and a few days before testing positive forCOVID-19, Mukherjee was awarded thePadma Shri for her performance in music.^[9] However, she refused the award, labelling it "disparaging and degrading".^[10] Mukherjee died of cardiac arrest and COVID-19 complications^[11] at a private hospital inKolkata on 15 February 2022, at the age of 90.^[12]

• Padma Shri in 2022 (refused)^[14]
• Banga Bibhushan in 2011.^[15]
• Bharat Nirman Award – Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999.
• National Film Award for Best Female Playback Singer for the songs "Amader Chuti Chuti" Jay Jayanti and "Ore Sakol Sona Molin Holo"Nishi Padma in 1971.
• BFJA Awards – Best Female Playback Singer forSandhya Deeper Sikha in 1965
• BFJA Awards – Best Female Playback Singer forJay Jayanti in 1972
• Bachsas Awards – Best Female Playback Singer forDhire Bohe Meghna in 1973
• HonoraryD.Litt. fromJadavpur University, Kolkata in 2009.^[16]
• Lata Mangeshkar Award in 1993, by Govt of Madhya Pradesh

On 27 January, Sandhya Mukherjee was admitted toSSKM Hospital with breathlessness and was later transferred to Apollo Gleneagles Hospital since she wasCOVID-19 positive.^[17] She also had lung infections,hypotension,ischemic heart disease,multi organ dysfunction and a fracture at her leftfemur.^[18][19] She was showing progressive improvement in her treatment, becameCOVID-19 negative and underwent a successful femoral surgery on 11 February.^[20] In the morning of 15 February, she was transferred to theintensive care unit for sudden severeabdominal pain andhypotension,^[21] following which she died at 7.30 pm of the same day following a cardiac arrest.^[22][23] One of the nurses of the hospital reported that she had the cardiac arrest at the time of listening to"Ei shohor theke aro onek dure", a popular Bengali song byManna Dey, with whom she sang numerous duets.^[24] She was cremated at the electric pyre ofKeoratola crematorium with full state honours.^[25]

• Sandhya Mukherjee atIMDb

• 1931 births
• 2022 deaths
• 20th-century Indian women singers
• Bengali musicians
• Bengali-language playback singers
• Bengali singers
• Best Female Playback Singer National Film Award winners
• Best Female Singer Bachsas Award winners
• Hindi-language playback singers
• Indian women playback singers
• Singers from Kolkata
• Women musicians from West Bengal
• Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in India

• CS1 Bengali-language sources (bn)
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from January 2022
• Use Indian English from September 2013
• All Wikipedia articles written in Indian English
• Articles with hCards
• Articles with hAudio microformats