At least two people were killed before his burial. One was a man who was shot by police after their bus came under attack as people raged about not having a last opportunity to see Rajkumar. And a policeman died in hospital after being beaten by a mob.

Dozens of mourners and police were hurt.

Officers had used tear gas and mounted baton-charges as at least 20,000 people converged on a stadium in Bangalore, where the actor's body had been put on view in a transparent coffin.

Rajkumar, aged 77, died Wednesday following a heart attack.

As the crowds increased in size and family and authorities prepared for Rajkumar's sunset burial at a film studio on the city's outskirts, the government of Karnataka state announced a public holiday.

The cortege to the gravesite was a massive procession led by three of Rajkumar's sons - Shivaraj, Raghavendra and Puneet, all of them actors. They were joined by many top film stars and political leaders behind a truck carrying Kumar's glass-topped coffin. Despite a massive police effort, the cortege was completely surrounded by the crowds.

Schools, shops, cinema halls were shut for the day and few buses were running. Leading IT companies - including Wipro, iGATE and Infosys, India's second-largest software company, along with multinationals Microsoft, Dell and IBM - were also closed.

"Offices that are open get stoned," said an executive at a multinational firm said.

Offices belonging to French insurance firm AXA and Microsoft had been attacked overnight after news of Rajkumar's death spread across the city.

Drivers pasted pictures of the actor to their windows in the hope of avoiding the mob's attention, cable television companies closed entertainment channels, and the president of India's main opposition party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, decided to skip the Karnataka leg of a high-profile campaign tour.

Rajkumar starred in more than 200 Kannada-language films over five decades. He soon gained a fiercely devoted following for roles ranging from police to gods. He was seen by many as the embodiment of the Kannada- speaking community: its biggest movie star, its most popular hero.

While he largely gave up acting in the mid-1990s, he remained one of the region's best-loved people.

The star whose real name was Mutturaju Singanalluru Puttaswamayya hit the headlines when India's most- wanted bandit Koose Muniswamy Veerappan stormed into Rajkumar's rural Karnataka home and abducted him in July 2000.

He was freed after 109 days, but the kidnapping by Veerappan - who was shot dead by police in 2004 - gripped the nation and brought rioting fans on to the streets in protest.

The most popular Indian movie stars often develop fanatical followings - when actor-turned-politician MG Ramachandran died in 2001, some fans killed themselves in grief - but Kumar's stature was unmatchable in parts of south India. AGENCIES