Senior journalist and writer Jan Khaskheli passes away

Jan Khaskheli, a senior journalist and writer associated with The News, passed away in Hyderabad on Sunday after a brief illness. He was 64.

According to the grieving family, the senior journalist and writer breathed his last at Hyderabad’s National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, where he had been taken because his health was deteriorating.

His funeral prayers were offered in his native village Karam Khan Nizamani, near Shahdadpur, where he was then laid to rest. He is survived by his wife, three daughters and a son.

Besides his years-long journalistic career highlighting agricultural and environmental issues of Sindh, Khaskheli was also well known among literary circles as a short story writer in the Urdu and Sindhi languages.

He had an active association with the literary committee of the Karachi Press Club. Prior to The News, he had been associated with a number of other newspapers.

Khaskheli had moved from Karachi to Hyderabad several years ago, but he kept on writing on issues related to farming, environment, climate change, natural resources and wildlife.

Eulogising Khaskheli’s journalistic work, the president of one of the factions of the Karachi Union of Journalists, Ejaz Ahmed, and its General Secretary Aajiz Jamali said that the deceased was a committed ideological journalist whose contributions were of superior quality.

Sindh Information and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani said in his condolence message that Khaskheli stood for practising journalism with truthfulness, honesty and full commitment to the profession. He said Khaskheli’s demise meant the country’s journalistic fraternity had been deprived of a bold and courageous journalist.

Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly, Haleem Adil Sheikh, said in his condolence message that the journalistic services of Khaskheli would always be remembered.

Senior Editor of The News, Talat Aslam, noted that fellow social activists, writers and journalists had taken to various social media platforms in large numbers to praise the journalistic work of Khaskheli for the protection of rural life, environment and economy in Sindh.

He said Khaskheli kept on writing on environmental, climate change and farming issues of Sindh despite the fact that newspapers these days had little space to carry such valuable journalistic content.