Delhi: Police in Tamil Nadu in south India are on high alert for fear that millions of grief-crazed supporters will swarm out onto the streets to vent their anguish over the death today of the woman they worshipped, Jayaram Jayalalithaa, one of India's most flamboyant and controversial politicians.

Draped in a green sari (an astrologer once told her to wear only green) that covered her entirely, Jayalalithaa has been a household figure for over three decades – a goddess to her followers and an idiosyncratic egoist to critics.

Since late September when she was admitted to hospital in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, south India, with fever and dehydration, thousands of her supporters, mainly women, stood vigil outside, alternately wailing and praying for her recovery.

On Sunday evening, though, the woman they called Amma (mother in Tamil) suffered a massive heart attack and on Tuesday doctors at Apollo Hospital announced her death.