Soundarya Raghu (born Sowmya Satyanarayan) (18 July 1972 – 17 April 2004) was an Indian film actress and producer known for her works predominantly in Telugu cinema. She was also starred in few Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, and Bollywood films in lead roles.

In 2002, she has received the National Film Award for Best Feature Film as producer for the Kannada film, Dweepa. She is down to earth.She received two Karnataka State Film Awards for Best Actress, several Filmfare Awards South, and the Nandi Awards, for her performances in films, such as Ammoru (1994), Anthapuram (1998), Raja (1999), Dweepa (2002), Aaptamitra (2004). During the peak of her career, Soundarya died in an aircraft crash near Bangalore on 17 April 2004 when she was on her way to Andhra Pradesh to campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Personal life

Soundarya, was born to industrialist, and Kannada film writer K. S. Satyanarayan in Kolar, Karnataka, India. She discontinued her M.B.B.S., and then married to G. S. Raghu, who is a Software Engineer. She had wide popularity and tremendous goodwill among Andhra pradesh and Telangana and probably the most successful actress after Savitri in the history of telugu cinema and is often called "Savitri of modern telugu cinema".She died in the 2004 aircraft crash, which happened in Bangalore, during an election campaign.