LAHORE, Jan 11: Chaudhry Manzoor Elahi, the father of Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi and uncle and father-in-law of PML president Shujaat Husain, died here of a cardiac arrest on Tuesday morning. He was 90.

Chaudhry Manzoor was the elder brother of the late Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi. He had a heart attack on Jan 6 and was admitted to a private hospital where he died. His health deteriorated in 1995. He went to the US for knee replacement in 1999 and had a stroke in January 2001.

Funeral prayers for him will be offered at 2pm at the Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi Stadium, Gujrat, on Wednesday. He will be buried in his family graveyard. Meanwhile, a large number of people from all walks of life started gathering at the residence of Chaudhry Shujaat and Pervaiz Elahi soon after hearing the news of his death.

They included federal and provincial ministers, senators, assembly members, party office-bearers, Nazims of various districts, and senior civil and military officers. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and PML secretary general Mushahid Husain, especially arrived from Islamabad, to condole with the Chaudhrys on the death of Chaudhry Manzoor Elahi.

Prominent among the visitors were National Assembly Speaker Amir Husain, National Security Council secretary Tariq Aziz, former president Farooq Leghari, Qazi Husain Ahmad, Aftab Sherpao, Rangers DG Maj-Gen Husain Mehdi, Punjab Assembly Speaker Afzal Sahi, opposition leader Qasim Zia and his deputy Rana Sanaullah Khan.

The late Chaudhry Manzoor was a progressive industrialist. He always stood behind his politician brother Chaudhry Zahoor Elahi. But he never interfered in his politics. They never disagreed with each other.

He was BSc engineering and had started his career as general manager of Ludhiana Woollen Mills in 1943. In 1946, he installed four powerlooms in a house in Amritsar and moved to his ancestral village Natt, Gujrat, after independence.

He installed 10 powerlooms in 1948 which was the beginning of his career as businessman. He set up modern textile, flour, ginning and carpet units with the machinery imported from Japan, Germany and England.

He brought the country's first plush making and cloth printing machines from Germany and Holland in the early 1970s, never missing any exhibition of the International Textile Machinery Association.

The factories and the land of the Chaudhry family were taken over by the late Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1971. He would attend his office at his Ravi Road mill daily without fail. But, he stopped going there after it was raided during the reign of Shahbaz Sharif in the mid-90s.

Though an active industrialist, Chaudhry Manzoor had limited friends. He leaves left behind three sons, Pervaiz, Javed, who looks after the family business in Pakistan and Sabahat, who is in carpet manufacturing in Thailand, and two daughters.