Kathmandu: Former Chairperson of the Rastriya Samachar Samiti (RSS) and senior journalist Mathawar Singh Basnet has passed away. The 79-year-old died of a heart attack this morning.
According to National News Agency Nepal, Basnet, a resident of Suryabinayak Municipality-8 in Bhaktapur, was on ventilator support at Annapurna Neuro Hospital in Kathmandu following a heart attack on Thursday night. He was the publisher and editor of Punarjagaran Weekly and had also served as the chair of Gorkhapatra Sansthan and led the Press Council Nepal.
Basnet was also a leader of the Nepali Congress Bhaktapur and had been imprisoned several times for his fight for democracy since joining politics in 2017 BS. He was released from prison after democracy was established in the country in 1990.
He is survived by his wife, a son, and a daughter. Basnet will be cremated later today at Pashupati Aryaghat in Kathmandu, according to Sushil Basnet, Secretary of the Nepali Congress Bhaktapur District Committee.