Ramakant Daayama, the highly versatile character actor who anchored key scenes in Chak De! India and Scam 1992, died at the age of 69 in Mumbai on Tuesday.
He had been battling a prolonged illness. His passing marks the loss of a true working actor, someone who quietly spent four decades holding his own alongside the biggest names in the Hindi film industry.
The news became public after his close friend and co-star, Shubhangi Latkar, broke her silence on Instagram. She posted a vintage video of the actor along with a short, emotional message mourning his passing. “Some losses leave behind a silence that words fail to express,” she wrote, according to a Bollywood Hungama report detailing her tribute. “Today feels like one of those days.”
Fans and fellow actors immediately began sharing their own memories online. Daayama was born in 1956 and officially stepped into the Indian film and advertising world in 1984. He built a long-standing legacy as the kind of actor directors called when they needed immediate authenticity on screen.
He spent his 40-year career elevating projects across completely different eras of Indian entertainment. Whether he was sharing the big screen with Shah Rukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor or slipping into the high-stakes corporate drama of modern streaming hits like The Trial S2, he never missed a beat.