India, Feb. 20 -- Veteran journalist and author K Govindan Kutty has died after a brief illness here, family sources said on Thursday. Govindan Kutty (81) is survived by wife, son and daughter. He breathed his last at his residence here on February 18. Kutty, known as KGK in the journalists' circle, had a deep knowledge of politics in Kerala and at the national level and had a notable career as a reporter and editor in Thiruvananthapuram and New Delhi.

He was the journalist who broke the news of the air crash involving the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai in 1977 at Jorhat in Assam. Desai had survived the crash. Kutty was one of the journalists who first reported the news of internal fissures in the monolithic structure of the CPI(M) in...