Nirmal Sen dead

Nirmal Sen, the celebrated journalist and communist leader who fought against the British Raj as a teenager, has died at 82.

His family said he died at around 6.30 pm on Tuesday at a hospital in Dhaka of septicemia, a lung infection that spread into his blood stream.

Within minutes, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina recalled in a message her long association with the departed communist leader Sen in the anti-autocracy movement.

President of Ganatantrik Biplabi Party, Sen was one of the best-known Leftist politicians in Bangladesh for the past few decades.

As a columnist, he wrote against the military dictators and often pointed to the failings of the elected governments.

He settled in his ancestral village after suffering a brain stroke and was receiving medical attention at home and abroad since 2003.

He began his political career through the anti-British movement and was a member of the Calcutta-based left-wing Revolutionary Socialist party. that later became part of West Bengal's ruling :Left Front.

In Bangladesh, he also led the Sramik-Krishak Samajbadi Dal, a smaller outfit that aligned with the left-of-the-centre parties in the 1980s when they campaigned against Generals Zia and Ershad.

Nirmal Sen had long been on the staff of the state-owned vernacular Dainik Bangla and wrote opinion pieces.