Former Rajya Sabha member and veteran journalist Kuldeep Nayar passed away in New Delhi early on Thursday. He was 95.
According to reports, the last rites of the journalist will be performed at the Lodhi Road crematorium in New Delhi.
Apart from journalism, Nayar was a diplomat, syndicate columnist, human rights activist, former High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom and an author.
Nayar was born at Sialkot in Punjab, in what is now Pakistan, on 14 August 1923 to Gurbaksh Singh and Pooran Devi.
He completed his B.A. (Hons.) from the Forman Christian College, Lahore and LL.B. from the Law College, Lahore. He is father of Supreme Court's senior advocate Rajiv Nayar. In 1952, he studied journalism from the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University on a scholarship.
He was initially an Urdu press reporter and later became an editor of Delhi edition of an English newspaper. He was arrested during the Emergency (1975-77).
Nayar was a human rights activist and a peace activist. He was a member of India's delegation to the United Nations in 1996. He was appointed High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in 1990 and nominated to the Rajya Sabha in August 1997.
He won 2003 Astor Award for Press Freedom and 2007 Shaheed Niyogi Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement.
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