Rani Mukerji’s mother, Krishna Mukerji, passed away aged 75 in Mumbai on Tuesday afternoon. Rani’s close friends and family members attended Krishna’s last rites.
Several videos and photos of celebs entering the cremation ground and exiting have gone viral.
Actors Shah Rukh Khan and Alia Bhatt, along with filmmaker Karan Johar, Anil Kapoor, Kabir Khan and Farhan Akhtar, gathered to pay their final respects and offer condolences to the family.
Visuals from the crematorium showed filmmaker Karan Johar arriving to offer his condolences to the Mukerji family. He gestured to the media not to click pictures. Shah Rukh Khan and Gauri Khan arrived together and avoided the media, while actor Anil Kapoor was also papped.
Director Ayan Mukerji was present to support his cousin Rani Mukerji during the last rites. Director-producer Ashutosh Gowariker and actor Vaani Kapoor were also papped.
Alia Bhatt was papped arriving at the funeral. She was seen wearing a mask and did not look at the camera.
Earlier, the family shared a statement confirming Krishna’s death and requested privacy from the media. “With heavy hearts, we share that Rani Mukerji’s mother Mrs Krishna Mukerji, 75, passed away this afternoon. The family is deeply grateful for your love, prayers, and support, and respectfully requests privacy during this time of immense grief,” the statement read.
Krishna Mukerji was a playback singer, best known for lending her voice to the song On the day of Eid, we met the king. from the 1982 film Teesri Aankh. She was married to filmmaker Ram Mukerji, who was one of the founders of Filmalaya Studios, Mumbai. He was best known for films such as Hum Hindustani (1960) and Leader (1964), starring Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala.
While Krishna Mukerji encouraged Rani to pursue acting, she wasn’t entirely convinced about her daughter’s acting abilities after watching her first screen test for her debut film The king's wedding procession will come. (1996).
Recalling the incident in a 2025 interaction with ANI, Rani had shared, “So for my mother, it was like, you do it and see how it goes. Though after my first screen test, she found me so bad that she told the producer, ‘I think you’ll ruin your film by taking my daughter. You’ll go through losses. Better you don’t take her.’ Because the producer was very keen to sign me, Salim uncle (The king's wedding procession will come. producer)…. But my mom was smart enough to understand that I was not doing a good job. So she was like, ‘I don’t think you should take her. ‘