Sridevi funeral: Thousands line streets to mourn Bollywood's first female superstar

'No matter how long I have to wait, I will wait. I'll wait until I'm able to pay my respects. I saw all her movies.'

The body of Bollywood actress Sridevi is carried in a truck during her funeral procession in Mumbai (Reuters/Danish Siddiqui)

Thousands of fans lined the streets of Mumbai to pay their respects to Bollywood star Sridevi as her body was returned home to India.

Many queued for hours near a private club near her home, where a security fence had been hastily erected for well wishers to wait behind.

Many had tears in their eyes for the 54-year-old who drowned in a bathtub at a Dubai hotel over the weekend.

One mourner who gave his name only as Prashant, arrived in the early hours before anyone was to be allowed in.

Visibly grief-stricken and holding a bouquet of flowers, he said: "No matter how long I have to wait, I will wait. I'll wait until I'm able to pay my respects. I saw all her movies."

Family members, other Bollywood actors and VIPs were allowed in through another gate, many arriving in luxury cars.

Those paying their respects included iconic actors from the Indian, such as Shah Rukh Khan, and Amitabh Bachchan.

Inside, the star’s body had been laid out on a raised platform with flowers surrounding her. Family members, including her husband, producer Boney Kapoor and her two daughters, stood by her side as people passed by to pay their respects.

Thousands gather to pay their respects to the Bollywood actress (AP Photo/Rajanish Kakade)

Although family asked press not to bring cameras in, photographs still emerged on news sites of her body, dressed in a magenta and gold sari with a red bindi, which traditionally represents the fact that a woman was married.

Her body was wrapped in an Indian flag and transported in a flower-covered truck that afternoon to the crematorium, for a Hindu funeral ceremony. Her picture was emblazoned on the front of the vehicle.

Many from the Bollywood film industry paid tribute to Sridevi,

Fellow actress Hema Malini tweeted a series of messages in her honour.

She said: “Paid my last respects to Sridevi. The entire industry was there grieving, some on the verge of breakdown. Such was her aura & magic in films. She lay there, beautiful in a red saree, serene in death & totally at peace”.

Indian film director and producer Ram Gopal Varma posted a message on Twitter which said: “She’s Gone out of our World ...What Will Remain Is What She Contributed To our World ..RIP Sridevi”

Investigators in Dubai, who said alcohol was found in her system, closed their case and handed the body to her family. She had been in Dubai to celebrate the wedding of a family member.

Her body was brought home in a private plane owned by Anil Ambani, a Mumbai industrialist and entertainment baron.

Celebrated for playing a huge part in redefining a woman’s role in the largely male-dominated film industry, Sridevi began as a child actress and went on to star in regional films in southern India before making her Bollywood debut in the late 1970s.

By the late 1980s, she was a name to reckon with in mainstream Hindi-language films and was able to command top billing and dominate screen space in a film industry in which the heroine's role was largely relegated to a few songs and a handful of romantic scenes as the leading man's love interest.

Despite a life spent entirely in the movie business, colleagues described her as quiet and shy on the sets until she faced the camera, when several of them recalled how she would "transform" into the character she was playing.

In 1997, she married Kapoor, a producer on many of her films and stepped away from cinema for many years while she raised her two daughters.

Additional reporting by Associated Press.