Paulami Sengupta, executive editor of the Bengali magazines of the ABP Group, passed away on Wednesday morning after an illness. She was 48. She is survived by her mother, younger sister and teenage daughter.

Paulami’s long association with ABP started while she was still a student of English literature — first at St Xavier’s College, where she was secretary of its Bengali Literary Society, and then at Jadavpur University — when her poems began to be published in the Bengali magazines of the group, including Desh. She joined the newsdesk of The Telegraph in 1994 as a trainee journalist but left a year later for the West Bengal Civil Services.

By the time Paulami returned in 2001 as chief sub-editor of the children’s magazine Anandamela, she had translated the Asterix comics series from French to Bengali for Ananda Publishers. She had also had her first collection of poems, Pencil Khuki, published. This won her the Krittibas Puraskar in 1998.

Paulami had earned a diploma in French Language from Alliance Francaise and had taught French and English part-time at the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture for three years, from 1991 to 1994. Born in the railway town of Jamalpur in Bihar, where she spent her early years, Paulami was conversant with Hindi. She translated several works from English and Hindi to Bengali, and vice versa.

She rose to become editor of Anandamela and the teenage magazine Unish Kuri, before taking over as executive editor of all Bengali magazines of the group. She was an able administrator. In her leadership role, she scouted and promoted new authors and backed up her younger colleagues.