Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Mukundan C. Menon dead

Special Correspondent

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The human rights activist and journalist Mukundan C. Menon, 57, passed away on Monday morning at a private hospital here where he was admitted a week ago following complications caused by a cardiac arrest.

He had been on life support systems since then and the end came at 8.30 a.m. Mr. Menon leaves behind his wife and three sons. A native of Thrissur, he had been at the vanguard of an apolitical human rights movement in the State ever since he came here from Delhi in 1993.

He was working as a freelance journalist in Delhi in 1969-70 when the Naxal movement was at its height. Shocked by the State repression let loose in its wake, he teamed up with a few other social activists and trade unionists to form the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) and started a public awareness campaign. He had been Delhi State secretary of the PUCL, which was instrumental in paving way for the 1979 Supreme Court directive that the death penalty be awarded only in the rarest of rare cases. He was elected secretary of the Confederation of Human Rights Organisations (CHRO), an umbrella organisation of human rights groups, in 1997.

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