Cartoonist Pran dead

Eminent cartoonist Pran Kumar Sharma, who gave life to comic book characters like Chacha Chaudhary and his friend Sabu, breathed his last on Wednesday after an eight-month battle with cancer. 

Pran died at a hospital in Gurgaon at the age of 75, according to his publisher Diamond Comics. “Pran passed away at 9 am at the Medanta hospital. He had been suffering from cancer of the intestine for the past eight months. He is survived by a son and a daughter,” said Gulshan Rai from Diamond Comics.

The Twitter account of the Prime Minister’s Office expressed grief over the celebrated cartoonist’s death on behalf of Narendra Modi. “The PM described Shri Pran Kumar Sharma as a versatile cartoonist who brought smiles on the faces of people through his rich work,” the @PMOIndia tweet read.

Pran was born in Kasur near Lahore in Pakistan and began his career in 1960 at a Delhi-based newspaper with his first comic strip “Daabu”. He rose to fame in 1969  when he sketched a Chacha Chaudhary comic strip for Hindi magazine “Lotpot”.

“Pran was making small cartoons for newspapers when I first contacted him in 1981. At that time there were no Indian comics, it was all reproductions of foreign titles,” his publisher said.