Suneil Anand, the only son of legendary Bollywood actor Dev Anand, has died in London at the age of 70 following a heart attack.
His death was confirmed by the family through a statement issued by his niece, Gina Narang.
Suneil passed away on July 26 in the same London hospital where his father, Dev Anand, died in 2011.
He is survived by his mother, 94-year-old actress Kalpana Kartik, and his sister, Devika, both of whom live in Ooty.
After his own acting career did not take off, Suneil took over the running of his father’s production banner, Navketan Films.
Navketan was founded in 1949 by Dev Anand along with his brother Chetan Anand, and went on to become one of Hindi cinema’s most respected production houses.
Dev Anand himself was one of Hindi cinema’s most celebrated leading men, known for films such as Guide, Jewel Thief, CID and Hare Rama Hare Krishna across a career spanning six decades before his death in 2011 at the age of 88.
Suneil Anand had appeared in a small number of films earlier in his career before stepping back from acting to focus on managing the family’s production house.
Dev Anand was honoured with the Dada Saheb Phalke Award in 2002 for his contribution to Indian cinema and received the Padma Bhushan in 2001, among the many accolades he collected across a career that began in the 1940s.
Navketan’s catalogue also includes films directed by Dev Anand’s brother, Vijay Anand, among them Guide and Jewel Thief, both produced under the banner and now regarded as classics of Hindi cinema. In recent years, Suneil Anand had been associated with efforts to manage and preserve this catalogue, continuing the family’s decades-long association with Indian film production even as the industry around it changed considerably.
Guide, released in 1965, is frequently cited as one of the most acclaimed films to emerge from Navketan’s decades of production work, and remains a reference point in discussions of the studio’s legacy.
(Image: Press Information Bureau (GODL-India))
