KARACHI, May 15: Senior journalist Jafer Naqvi died of a heart attack here on Wednesday afternoon. He was 76.

He will be buried in the Defence graveyard on Thursday. His Soyem will be held on Friday between 4pm and 6pm at the Defence Imambargah.

Mr Naqvi, who leaves three daughters, was born in Bihar, India, in 1926. He graduated from Aligarh University in 1946. Moving to the then East Pakistan, he joined Radio Pakistan in Dhaka in the early 1950s. He became news editor at Radio Pakistan, Dhaka. He then moved to Karachi.

In 1955, Mr Naqvi joined the Urdu-language newspaper Imroz. He afterwards joined the Pakistan Times. When the military regime put pressure on the newsmen in the Pakistan Times to resign, Mr Naqvi refused to do so. He was, therefore, dismissed by the government.

Mr Naqvi teamed up with Abbas Khalili, one of those Indian Civil Service officers who had been sacked by the Ayub Khan government. He moved to Chittagong as director of Abbas Khalili’s Eastern Refinery. He was working as the executive director at the Eastern Refinery when the then East Pakistan fell in 1971. Consequently, he was made a prisoner of war.

He returned to Karachi after four years of incarceration and set up his own business. He persuaded A.T. Chaudhry to become the first editor of Islamabad-based The Muslim. Mr Naqvi succeeded A.T. Chaudhry at The Muslim and became its chief editor.

Mr Naqvi also worked as general-secretary of the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists in what was then East Pakistan. He was also one of the founding members of the Karachi Press Club.