KARACHI, Dec 16: Eminent neuropsychiatrist, human rights activist and anti-militarisation campaigner Prof K. Zaki Hasan passed away here on Saturday after a protracted illness. He was 79.

He was laid to rest in Khurasan Bagh graveyard on Hub River Road after his funeral prayers were offered after Zuhar prayers.

The bereaved family said that Quran Khwani and Majlis would be held at his residence on Monday.

Born in Panipat, India, in 1928, the late intellectual and rights activist got his initial education in Hyderabad Deccan and did his graduation from the Usmania University Medical College before migrating to Pakistan.

The late professor, besides holding many honours from foreign institutions, headed the neuropsychiatry department of the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (1967-87). He had played a key role and put in personal efforts for the establishment of the department.

Prof Hasan also remained Dean of the Jinnah Medical College and vice-chancellor of the Baqai University. He also played a pivotal role in shaping the history and evolution of psychiatry in Pakistan.

Apart from his valuable services to the medical profession, especially psychiatry, his active role in a long struggle for human rights of the working class and other segments of society had widely been recognized and commended. He was known for his crusade against militarisation and nuclearisation of the subcontinent, said an office-bearer of the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education Research (PILER), of which Prof Hasan remained president.

“We saw him as an activist of civil society working for a progressive change. He played a leading role both as an intellectual and a leader. He not only identified the physical and social ills, but also suggested practicable remedies,” he said.

Prof Hasan’s students, deeply shocked by his demise, said they always regarded the late professor as “father of psychiatry in Pakistan.”

According to one of his students, at the Dow Medical College, which he had joined in the early ’50s, the late professor had been a role model — competent, highly professional and expert in his field — who had complete knowledge of not only each and every aspect of his profession but of numerous other problems faced by humanity.