Former Indian President Abdul Kalam dies after collapsing during a lecture

According to Indian media, Kalam, 83, who reached Shillong via Guwahati in the morning, collapsed during a lecture at the Indian Institute of Management-Shillong (IIM-S) around 6:30 pm and 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 body of the former president will be flown to New Delhi via Guwahati Tuesday morning,” Warjri said.

IIM-S officials said Kalam, who had tweeted 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.

Kalam was born and raised in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu on October 15, 1931.

He studied physics and aerospace engineering.

Abdul Kalam spent the next four decades as a scientist and science administrator, mainly at the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and was intimately involved in India’s civilian space program and military missile development efforts.

He thus came to be known as the Missile Man of India for his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle technology.

Kalam also played a pivotal organizational, technical and political role in India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original nuclear test by India in 1974.