Actor Murali, national award winner, dies

Noted South Indian actor and national award winner Murali (55) died at a private hospital here on Thursday night. The character actor, who had been closely associated with pro-Left cultural and intellectual movements in the state for the past three decades, had unsuccessfully contested as the CPM candidate from Alappuzha Lok Sabha constituency in 1999.On returning from an overseas location of a Tamil movie two days back, Murali was admitted to the hospital with fever. The death was due to multiple organ failure, said the hospital sources.The seasoned theatre personality, active in commercial and parallel film streams alike, had been functioning as the chairman of the Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi since the Left government assumed office in 2006. He had been one of the founder-directors of the CPM-promoted Kairali TV.Murali won the state award for the best actor thrice and the national award in 2001 for his performance in Malayalam movie Naithukaran. He acted in more than 200 films in south Indian languages, apart from dabbling in Hindi too.