Obituary Events in 2002
Jan • Feb • Mar • Apr • May • Jun • Jul • Aug • Sep • Oct • Nov • Dec
JANUARY
| Jan 1 | Gamini Athukorale, Sri Lankan Minister of Transport, Highways and Civil Aviation, of a heart attack in Ratnapura, south-central Sri Lanka. | Full Story |
| Pramila Dandavate (73), prominent champion of human rights, in New Delhi after a massive heart attack. | Full Story | |
| Jan 2 | Anil Agarwal (54), renowned environmentalist, in Dehra Dun, of leukaemia. | |
| Jan 4 | Prof. Satish Dhawan (82), former ISRO chairman and space scientist, in Bangalore. | Full Story |
| Jan 12 | Cyrus Vance (84), former U.S. Secretary of State in the Jimmy Carter administration, at a hospital in New York. | |
| Jan 20 | R. N. Kao (84), founder-chief of RAW, of old age in New Delhi. | Full Story |
FEBRUARY
| Feb 9 | Britain's Princess Margaret (71), younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, in King Edward VII Hospital, after a stroke. | Full Story |
| Feb 15 | Ke Pauk (72), former Khmer Rouge military chief and a leading figure in Cambodia's 1970s "killing fields" regime, in Anlong Veng northern Cambodia, of natural causes. | |
| Feb 21 | Jagpravesh Chandra (89), the grand old man of Delhi politics, in New Delhi. | Full Story |
| Feb 22 | Chuck Jones (89), creator of such cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig, at his home in Newport Beach, in the U.S. | Full Story |
| Feb 27 | Spike Milligan (83), comedian and the last surviving member of The Goon Show, of liver failure at his home in Rye, on the southeast coast of London. |
MARCH
| Mar 4 | K. V. Raghunatha Reddy (78), former Governor of West Bengal and Tripura, in New Delhi after a brief illness. | Full Story |
| Mar 27 | Dudley Moore (66), British-born actor and comedian, who starrted in "10" and "Arthur", after a long battle against a rare brain disease, at his home in New Jersey. | Full Story |
| Mar 28 | Tikka Khan, former Pakistan Army Chief, once known as the "Butcher of Bangladesh", in Rawalpindi. | Full Story |
| Mar 29 | Director Willy Wilder (95), the first filmmaker to win three Oscars in a year ("The Apartment" in 1960), at his Beverly Hills home. | |
| Mar 30 | Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (101), in her sleep at the Royal Lodge. | Full Story |
APRIL
| Apr 6 | Manohar Rajaram Chhabria (56), the Dubai-based Indian business tycoon, of a heart attack, in a Mumbai hospital. | Full Story |
| Apr 12 | Kondapalli Seetharamaiah (87), veteran communist leader and PWG founder, in Vijayawada. | Full Story |
| Apr 20 | Sarvepalli Gopal (78), historian and son of the former President, S. Radhakrishnan, at a private hospital in Chennai following renal failure. | Full Story |
| Apr 28 | Ruth Handler (85), who created Barbie, the world's most popular doll, at a hospital, in Los Angeles, of complications from colon surgery she underwent three months ago. |
MAY
| May 3 | M. S. Oberoi (103), chairman of the Oberoi Group, in New Delhi, after a brief illness. | Full Story |
| B. P. Sinha (85), prominent historian who discovered the ancient Vikramashila University in Bhagalpur, after a protracted illness, in Patna. | Full Story | |
| Baroness Barbara Castle (91), hailed as Labour's "Red Queen" and U.K.'s first Iron Lady, in her sleep, in London. | Full Story | |
| May 4 | Yevgeni Svetlanov (74), pianist and conductor, highly decorated during the Soviet period, in his Moscow apartment after a long illness. | |
| May 10 | Kaifi Azmi (82), well-known Urdu poet, in Mumbai after prolonged illness. | Full Story |
| May 18 | S. L. Shakdher (83), former CEC and former Secretary-General, Lok Sabha, in New Delhi, after a brief illness. | Full Story |
| May 19 | Nasikrao Tirpude (85), veteran Congressman who championed the cause of a separate Vidarbha State, in Mumbai. | Full Story |
| Stephen Jay Gould (60), American evolutionist theorist (punctuated equilibrium), in New York, of a rare form of cancer. | ||
| May 27 | Iqbal Singh Gulati (79), leading economist and planner, in Thiruvananthapuram, battling cancer. | Full Story |
| May 29 | Herbert Johnson (104), one of the last living rescuers of survivors from the Titanic, after slipping into a coma. |
JUNE
| Jun 5 | Murugesu Sivasithamparam (79), president of the Tamil United Liberation Front, at the Colombo National Hospital, after a brief illness. | Full Story |
| Jun 7 | Basappa Danappa Jatti (89), former Vice-President and acting President, at the Mahavir Jain Hospital, Bangalore. | Full Story |
| Jun 11 | Dr. T. N. Khooshoo (75), eminent environmentalist and one of the main architects of the Ganga Action Plan, at NOIDA, UP, after a prolonged illness. | |
| Jun 28 | Dev Dutt Shastri (84), AIFB Chairman, in New Delhi. | Full Story |
JULY
| Jul 6 | Dhirubhai Ambani (70), Chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd., at the Breach Candy Hospital, Mumbai. | Full Story |
| Jul 9 | Rod Steiger (77), the burly Hollywood actor who portrayed a procession of real life characters, in a Los Angeles hospital after pneumonia and kidney failure. | Full Story |
| Jul 12 | Mani Krishnaswami (72), eminent Carnatic vocalist and Padma Shri awardee, in Chennai following a heart attack. | Full Story |
| Jul 19 | Alexander Ginzburg (65), Russian writer and a leading dissident during the Soviet era, of cancer in Paris. | |
| Jul 28 | N. K. Ranganath (77), popularly known as Ranga, cartoonist, of a massive heart attack, in Bangalore. | Full Story |
AUGUST
| Aug 31 | Lionel Hampton (94), Vibraphone Virtuoso and a great name in jazz history, in New York. |
SEPTEMBER
| Sep 1 | B. V. Karanth (73), "missionary" director, actor and musician, at a private hospital in Bangalore after prolonged illness. | Full Story |
| Priya Tendulkar (42), noted actress and daughter of renowned playwright Vijay Tendulkar after cardiac arrest, at her residence in Mumbai. | Full Story | |
| Sep 24 | P. R. Pisharoty (93), known as the father of Indian Remote Sensing, in Pune. | |
| Sep 30 | Raunaq Singh (79), eminent industrialist, of a heart attack in New Delhi. | Full Story |
OCTOBER
| Oct 6 | Prince Claus (76), German-born husband of the Netherlands Queen Beatrix, of Parkinson's disease, in Amsterdam. | |
| Oct 25 | Richard Harris (72), British actor, of cancer in London. | Full Story |
| Oct 27 | Vazhapadi K. Ramamurthy (62), Congress veteran and former Union Minister, in Chennai after a cardiac arrest. | Full Story |
NOVEMBER
| Nov 18 | James Coburn (74), the tough-guy actor in films that included 'Our Man Flint' and 'The Magnificent Seven', of a heart attack at his home in Beverly Hills. |
DECEMBER
| Dec 1 | Abu Abraham (78), political cartoonist at a private hospital, in Thiruvananthapuram. | |
| Dec 5 | Gen. Ne Win (91), Myanmar's former military dictator under house arrest in his lakeside villa, in Yangon. | |
| Dec 11 | Nani Ardeshir Palkhivala (82), noted jurist, at the Jaslok Hospital, Mumbai after protracted illness. | Full Story |
Jan • Feb • Mar • Apr • May • Jun • Jul • Aug • Sep • Oct • Nov • Dec