NEW DELHI: One of the grandsons of India's apostle of peace and freedom fighter Mahatma Gandhi was found dead in New Delhi on Wednesday, relatives and police said. Seventy-year-old Ramchandra Gandhi, a former professor at Princeton University, in the United States, was found on the floor of his rented room at the elite India International Centre by a member of the cleaning staff.

The police “feel it was death by natural causes.... He was not suffering from any life threatening disease,” Mahatma Gandhi's great-grandson and Ramchandra's nephew, Tushar Gandhi, said.

Ramachandra checked into his rented accommodation earlier this week after frequent power cuts left him without air conditioning during a sweltering heat wave over the weekend.

Temperatures in New Delhi touched the season's high of 44.9 degrees Celsius, nearly five degrees above normal, on Saturday.

Ramchandra was the son of Devadas Gandhi, the youngest of four sons of Mahatma Gandhi. There are 119 living direct descendants of Gandhi.—AFP