Cancer, MH 370, murder: Untimely deaths in the Kumaramangalam family

Kitty Kumaramangalam, wife of late Union minister Phanindranath Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, was found murdered in her home in Delhi's Vasant Vihar late on Tuesday.

While relatively little known by those used to the 24x7 media coverage seen today, Kitty was married into a family that was among the most reputed in Indian public life for decades.

Rangarajan Kumaramangalam's paternal grandfather Paramasivan Subbarayan (1889-1962) was a freedom fighter, who ascended to the post of chief minister of the erstwhile Madras presidency in 1926. Subbarayan would also serve as India's ambassador to Indonesia, as Union minister in the Jawaharlal Nehru government and governor of Maharashtra.

One son of Subbarayan, late general P. P. Kumaramangalam (1913-2000), was chief of the Indian Army from 1967 to 1969. Another son of Subbarayan, S. Mohan Kumaramangalam (1916-1973), who was father of Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, was a prominent theorist of the undivided Communist Party of India. Mohan left the Communist Party after the DMK ended Congress rule in Tamil Nadu in 1967 and joined the Congress.

Mohan Kumaramangalam would rise to become minister of iron and steel mines in the Indira Gandhi government in 1971. However, Mohan died an untimely death. He was one of the 48 people on board Indian Airlines flight 440 who died after the aircraft crashed on May 31, 1973, as it approached Palam Airport in Delhi. The ill-fated aircraft was flying from Madras (now Chennai) to Delhi. Unfortunately, Mohan's death was not the last untimely one in the Kumaramangalam family.

Mohan Kumaramangalam had married Kalyani Mukherjee, niece of Congress leader Ajoy Mukherjee, who would rise to become chief minister of West Bengal.

Mohan Kumaramangalam had three children: Rangarajan and two daughters—Lalitha Kumaramangalam and Uma Mukherjee.

Rangarajan had an early start in politics. In 1971, Rangarajan became the first president of the National Students Union of India, the students wing of the Congress. He began rising in the Congress as a friend of late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. He became a minister in the Congress government of P.V. Narasimha Rao, but quit the party in 1995, alleging corruption. In 1997, Rangarajan Kumaramangalam joined the BJP, becoming a minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee governments that came to power in 1998 and 1999.

Rangarajan was minister for power till August 2000, when he died of suspected acute myeloid leukaemia at the age of 48. His death triggered controversy with hospitals being accused of negligence in diagnosing him properly.

In an interview to Rediff in September 2000, Kitty even alleged, "I think some poison had entered his body, and was eating up his body."

In 2014, a grandson of Mohan Kumaramangalam was one of the 227 passengers on board Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 that went missing after it took off from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Muktesh Mukherjee, a Canadian citizen, was the son of Uma Mukherjee. Muktesh was vice-president of the China operations of a US-based company. He was on board MH 370 with his wife Xiaomao Bai, who was of Chinese origin. At the time of the incident, The Telegraph quoted a family member as saying, "We’re living in fear of a second disaster in the air in our family,” referring to the death of Mohan Kumaramangalam in 1973.