Poornima (singer)
Indian singer

Poornima (born as Sushma Shrestha) is an Indian playback singer. Starting as a child artist, she became a leading playback singer in Bollywood during the 1990s.
Early life
Hailing from the Newar community from Nepal, Poornima was born as an Indian in Mumbai. Her father was music composer Bholanath Shrestha, who worked primarily with Hindi film music directors. He was from Kathmandu and settled in Kolkata and eventually in Mumbai.
Career
Her father’s friend and assistant to noted music director Shankar–Jaikishan recommended her to Shankar. In spite of the prevailing custom of women playback singers singing for children, Shankar took the challenge of using an unknown child to sing "Hai Na Bolo Bolo" for the film Andaz. Sushama recorded her first song on 11 November 1969 with Mohammed Rafi and Suman Kalyanpur. She was the first successful child singer in Hindi films. She recorded a children's album called Bal Geet, which had Shrinivas Khale composing the songs and Shanta Shelke penning the lyrics.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Poornima (singer)” as indian singer. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as indian singer. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7648978. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “Poornima (singer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.