NEW DELHI, July 30: Former military ruler Field Marshal Ayub Khan had learnt late in life, only after he was out of power, that press censorship under his rule had harmed him, Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh said on Friday, quoting from an old interview.

According to Dr Singh, President Ayub Khan had confessed in the interview that the one thing he would not do if given another chance at the top job was to gag the press.

“That time, I had closed my eyes and believed what the bureaucracy said and was cut off from reality,” he had told a Pakistani student in the interview which had appeared in the London School of Economics Journal.

The story was narrated by Dr Singh when he departed from his prepared speech at a function here where he received the first copy of English newspaper Daily News and Analysis launched in Mumbai on Friday. Subhash Chandra of Zee TV and Bharat Agarwal of Bhaskar group of newspapers have jointly launched the paper.