MIM leader Afsar Khan passes away

Hyderabad, Feb 6 (IANS) Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM leader) Mohammed Muqteda Khan alias Afsar Khan died of multiple organ failure early Friday. He was 66.

A former member of the united Andhra Pradesh state legislative assembly, Khan breathed his last at a private hospital here. He is survived by three sons and four daughters.

Funeral prayers were offered following the Friday prayers at Masjid-e-Azizia at Mehdipatnam. He was buried in a graveyard in Murad Nagar.

Telangana deputy chief minister Mahmood Ali, MIM president and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, party legislators and a large number of MIM activists and Khan's supporters attended the last rites.

Khan, a businessman, was first elected from the Karwan assembly constituency in Hyderabad in a by-election in 2003. He was re-elected in 2004 and 2009.

Health problems forced him to opt out of the electoral race in the first election to the Telangana assembly last year.

Khan was one of the three MIM legislators who attacked controversial Bangladeshi novelist Taslima Nasreen during a book release function here in 2007.