Eminent Malayalam poet, conservationist and women’s rights activist Sugathakumari, who had been undergoing treatment for Covid-19, died at the government medical college hospital in the Kerala capital on Wednesday.

She was 86 and leaves behind daughter Lakshmi Devi, family sources said.

Fondly called “Sugatha Teacher” by her admirers, the activist-poet had been admitted to the intensive care unit of the hospital after being diagnosed with the viral infection on December 21.

One of the most celebrated Malayalam poets of the contemporary era, Sugathakumari was known for her poems filled with compassionate empathy, human sensitivity and philosophical quest. She fought against injustices, especially the oppression of women and indiscriminate exploitation of nature.

Sugathakumari had led the fiercest environmental campaign witnessed in Kerala — against a proposed hydel project in the Silent Valley on the Western Ghats three decades ago, and was also at the forefront of the recent agitation against the construction of an airport at Aranmula.

She had been running for over three decades “Abhaya”, an organisation for deprived women. She had served as the first chairperson of the Kerala State Women’s Commission.

Born as the second daughter of freedom fighter and poet Bodheswaran and his wife Karthiyayini Amma on January 22, 1934, Sugathakumari published her first collection of poems — Muthuchippikal — in 1960.