Noted journalist Sachidananda Murthy passes away

Bengaluru: K S Sachidananda Murthy (68), former resident editor of THE WEEK and the Malayala Manorama daily, died in his hometown, Bengaluru, on Friday. He was in recovery after a lung transplant surgery.

He was a man who needed no introductions in Delhi’s political and media circles. Sachi, as he was known to friends far and wide, joined THE WEEK in November 1982 as its Bangalore correspondent and stayed with the Malayala Manorama group until his retirement in September 2022.

In February 1989, he became the magazine’s special correspondent in Bangalore and moved to Delhi in April 1990 as the chief of the national capital bureau. In April 2000, he was appointed resident editor. For 31 years, Sachi’s weekly column appeared on the edit page of the Malayala Manorama—it was called New Delhi initially and was renamed Deshiyam in 1991.

Sachi was formerly secretary general of the Editors Guild of India (2007) and a member of the Press Council of India and the Central Press Accreditation Committee. In 2009, he became chairman of the Lok Sabha Press Advisory Committee.

He was a recipient of the Durlabh Singh Media Award and the Karnataka Media Academy’s award for lifetime contribution to journalism at the national level.

Sachi’s family roots were in the Ashtagrama villages in Karnataka’s Kolar district. He is survived by his wife Chandrika, sons Nithin and Rohan, and daughters-in-law Lakshmi Bharadwaj and Vaishnavi Narayan.