Hyderabad, Sep 16 - Eminent litterateur and Sahitya Akademi winner Meenakshi Mukherjee died here Wednesday. She was 72.

Mukherjee, a professor at the University of Hyderabad, fainted and collapsed at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) here while preparing to board a flight to New Delhi, where she was to release one of her books.

'She was travelling alone and was to board an Indigo Airlines flight to Delhi. She fainted at Gate 22 and was rushed to Apollo Medical Centre at the airport, where she was declared dead,' an airport spokesman told IANS.

Her relatives, who came to see her off, were still at the airport when she collapsed and was rushed to the medical centre, he said.

Mukherjee, who is survived by two daughters, was on her way to Delhi to release her new book 'An Indian For All Seasons', a biography of historian R.C. Dutt. The book published by Penguin was to be released Thursday.

Wife of litterateur Sujit Mukherjee, Meenakshi Mukherjee was a big name in English literature and had received the Sahitya Akademi award in 2003 for her book 'The Perishable Empire: Essays on Indian Writing in English'.

She was also chairperson of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies from 2001 to 2004 and the chairperson of its Indian Chapter from 1993 to 2005.