Congress leader and former information and broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi died at the age of 72 on Monday, sources at New Delhi’s Indraprastha Apollo Hospital confirmed.
Doctors declared him dead at 12.10pm.
“Yes, he was declared dead by the doctors around noon,” confirmed his wife, Deepa Dasmunsi.
“We tried almost everything possible, I even took him to Germany for stem cell therapy but unfortunately that didn’t really work. The therapy was mainly aimed at improving his brain function but it wasn’t effective,” she said.
Dasmunsi suffered a severe heart attack and stroke in 2008 and despite best efforts of doctors, which included a shot at stem cell therapy in Germany, did not recover much.
Dasmunsi was brought to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) casualty late on October 12th night, after he complained of breathlessness and severe chest pain. Doctors treating him had said that he suffered a heart attack on way to the hospital.
He had suffered a complete left ventricular failure of the heart before he was admitted to AIIMS casualty, from where he was shifted to the cardiac intensive care unit of the institute around 2.30 am,” doctors had told then.
His condition was extremely critical throughout and he was put on ventilator. His condition was deteriorating, with left side of his body completely paralysed.
Dasmunshi was also a diabetic, and had suffered a severe heart attack in July that year on way to Kolkata from Malda district in north West Bengal, after attending a Congress party meeting.
He was admitted in Calcutta’s Apollo Gleneagles hospital where he underwent angioplasty to unblock two blood vessels. After a week at AIIMS, he was shifted to Apollo Hospital and remained there for nearly a year, before being air-lifted to Germany for stem cell therapy.
“He had been critically ill for the past one month and unfortunately succumbed to his illness at 12.10 pm on 20.11.17,” said Apollo through a statement.
Dasmunsi was a member of Parliament from 1999 to 2009. He served as the union minister of parliamentary affairs and the minister of information and broadcasting from 2004 to 2008, during the first term of the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government.
He represented the Raiganj constituency in West Bengal in the Lok Sabha. After his hospitalisation, the Congress fielded his wife, Deepa Dasmunshi, from the constituency in 2009. In 2014, the Trinamool Congress roped in his brother Satyaranjan Dasmunsi to face-off against Deepa.
Dasmunsi also served as the President of the All India Football Federation for almost 20 years. Dasmunsi was the first Indian to serve as a match commissioner in a FIFA World Cup game.
