Dr Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed
Term of office: August 24, 1974, to February 11, 1977
An admirer of Mirza Ghalib's poetry, Dr Ahmed studied law at Cambridge and will be remembered as the President who signed the order proclaiming the Emergency at Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's behest on June 25, 1975.
He was also the second President to die in office.
He returned to India from England in 1928 to start a legal practice and was actively involved in the freedom struggle. He had met Jawaharlal Nehru in England in 1925 and was greatly impressed by his ideas.
When talk of his marriage was going on, he was serving a jail term in Assam. In response to a query about the bridegroom, a relative said: Filhal to jail men hain (At present he is in jail). The wedding nonetheless was fixed!
Dr Ahmed died of a heart attack on his return from a tour of South-East Asia only the day before. His body was buried close to Parliament House. His mausoleum was designed in the later Mughal tradition of open graves, where four freestanding arches meet in the sky.
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