Former PM of India dies aged 93

Former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a Hindu nationalist who set off a nuclear arms race with rival Pakistan but later began a groundbreaking peace process, died yesterday after a prolonged illness. He was 93.

The All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where he had been hospitalised for more than two months for treatment of a kidney infection and chest congestion, announced his death. Vajpayee, a leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, suffered a stroke in 2009.

A onetime journalist, Vajpayee was the moderate leader of a strident Hindu nationalist movement.