Civil Rights Activist, K.G. Kannabiran Expired

Eminent civil rights activist and prominent lawyer K.G. Kannabiran (81) expired in Hyderabad on 30 December 2010. Kannabiran was born in 1929 and went on to obtain master's degree in Economics and a degree in law from the Madras University. He had set up his legal practice in 1961. Since the late 1960s, he began to defend political dissenters that eventually marked the beginning of his over three-decade-long civil liberties and human rights work. He was the president of Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee between 1978 and 1994. He has also served as national president of People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL).

Kannabiran played a significant role to release seven IAS officers and others held hostage by the People's War extremists in East Godavari district in December 1987. He was a member of Concerned Citizen's Tribunal that inquired into the Gujarat carnage. He had also been appointed as senior counsel by the CBI in the prosecution of the accused in the Shankar Guha Niyogi murder case in Madhya Pradesh. He authored a book - The wages of impunity: power, justice and human rights.