India, Oct. 5 -- Renowned actor Sandhya Shantaram, who created a niche for herself in Hindi and Marathi film industry in the 1950s with her exquisite dance numbers and an amazing range of roles, died late Friday night after protracted illness. She was 94.

Wife of V Shantaram, the legendary filmmaker who was in the league of celluloid czars such as Mehboob Khan, Bimal Roy, Raj Kapoor, S Mukherjee and Guru Dutt, Sandhya played the female lead under the reputed Raj Kamal Kala Mandir banner in films which captured the socio-cultural transformation during the Nehruvian era.

Born in 1931 in a Maharashtrian Kayastha family, Sandhya and her sister Vatsala, also a talented actor-singer, re-located to Mumbai from Baroda in colonial India. The sis...