Former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam dies

NEW DELHI: Former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam passed away in Shillong on Monday evening. He was 83.
Kalam, who reached Shillong via Guwahati in the morning, collapsed during a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management-Shillong (IIM-S) at around 6:30 pm and was rushed to the Bethany Hospital there.
Doctors at the hospital said he was brought dead around 7pm. “He had no pulse when he was admitted to the hospital. We can attribute his death to cardiac arrest,” a doctor said.The hospital authorities, however, refrained from confirming the death until Meghalaya governor V Shanmughanathan and chief secretary PBO Warjri visited the hospital around 8pm.
“The body of the former president will be flown to New Delhi via Guwahati Tuesday morning,” Warjri said. IIM-S officials said Kalam, who hadtweeted in the morning about the function, showed no signs of illness after he reached the Meghalaya capital. “We had a packed house for the lecture on Liveable Planet Earth,” an official said.
Mr Kalam served as India’s 11th president from 2002 to 2007 and was popularly known as “Missile Man” after pioneering the country’s military missile programme.“His death is a great loss to the scientific community,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said. “He took India to great heights. He showed the way.”