Amolok Mehta; Indian Fought for His Blind Son

Amolok Ram Mehta, 91, a population control specialist whose efforts to educate his blind son became the subject of a book by the son, has died of a heart attack in New Delhi.

Ved Mehta’s “Daddyji,” published in the United States in the late 1960s, was about the life of his father, who retired in 1951 as the deputy director-general of government health services.

In India, blind children were often turned out to beg, but Mehta took advantage of his friendship with Lord Mountbatten, the last British viceroy of India, to send the boy out of the country to study. Ved Mehta, who became a successful writer, studied at Pomona College in California and Harvard and Oxford.

The elder Mehta also was credited with important discoveries in the battle against bubonic plague. After his retirement, Mehta worked with the United Nations on a population project. He died Saturday.