Ace comedian Raju Srivastava passes away at 58

Mumbai, Sep 21: Comedian Raju Srivastava has passed away in Delhi at the age of 58. Raju died at 10.20 am, after 41 days of hospitalisation.

The comedian was on a ventilator for over a month after he was admitted to the hospital following a heart attack.

For the unversed, Raju Srivastava suffered a heart attack on August 9 following which he was rushed to the AIIMS hospital in Delhi.

The comic had a heart attack while exercising at a hotel's gym here. He gained initial stardom as an Amitabh Bachchan look-alike and also imitated him very well. He landed in Mumbai (then Bombay), and after a few years did a blink-and-you-miss role in the superhit Rajshri movie Maine Pyar Kiya. He did many other small roles in a varied number of movies, mostly an inconspicuous comic roles.

Raju Srivastav, a talented artiste, with a flair for comedy, had done stage shows with Kalyanji Anandji, Bappi Lahiri, and Nitin Mukesh in India and abroad. He was also noticed by Johnny Lever when he used to do stage shows before joining the film industry. Raju's mimicry was liked and applauded by the masses and he was an important person in Johnny Lever's troupe.