Arun Dutt, the younger son of legendary filmmaker Guru Dutt and playback singer Geeta Dutt, died on Saturday, July 26. He was unwell for the past year and died of multiple organ failure at Ruby Medical Centre, Pune. He was 58.

Filmmaker Kalpana Lajmi, Guru Dutt's niece, told Mirror. “I was on my way back from Pune when I got the news and immediately turned my car back. Arun died in the afternoon and was cremated at 10.30 pm on Saturday."

Arun is survived by his wife Kavita and two daughters-Gouri and Karuna. Gauri is a theatre artiste while Karuna was formerly employed with Anurag Kashyap's production house.

Remembering Arun, who organised many Guru Dutt retrospectives in India and abroad, Lajmi said: “What a brilliant man, but what a waste of life! He drank himself to death. I wish he had gone to a rehab."

Arun worked tirelessly to maintain his father's legacy and had vociferously protested Sheetal Talwar's film on Guru Dutt. “He was instrumental in the upkeep of Guru Dutt's films. What mattered to him most was that his father shouldn't be misrepresented," said Lajmi.

Arun made an action film in 1992 called Khule Aam under his father's banner, Guru Dutt Movies Pvt. Ltd. (GDMPL), and faded from public memory after it flopped.

His older brother Tarun too made just one film Bindiya Chamkegi in the 1980s and died young. “Tarun died at the age of 33," said Lajmi.

The Dutts' daughter Nina, who lives in Pune, briefly made news as a singer in the late-nineties.