P. V. Krishnan

Krishnan's death at the age of 83 was reported on 15 November 2026. Chief Minister V. D. Satheesan said he was deeply saddened by the passing of the veteran cartoonist, saying his artistic brilliance and sharp journalistic wit had left an indelible mark on Keralam and that through Sakshi and his early front page work for Mathrubhumi he had captured the pulse of society. The place and cause of death, and funeral arrangements, had not been publicly reported at the time of writing.

P. V. Krishnan was born in 1943 at Aroli, in the Kannur district of northern Kerala. He trained in art and began his career as an art teacher, and he later remained closely associated with Kasaragod, which local reports described as the field of his working life. In 2017 Kasaragod held a tribute event and exhibition in his honour, also titled Sakshi.

After working as an art teacher, Krishnan joined the Directorate of Public Relations of the Government of Kerala as a designer in 1976. The job brought him close to the state's political life, and he served in it during the governments of K. Karunakaran, E. K. Nayanar and A. K. Antony.

In 1977 his political satire series Sakshi (Witness) began appearing in Kunkumam weekly. It ran for decades and became one of the most familiar cartoon features in Malayalam print, built on minimal drawing and few words but pointed messages. His cartoons also appeared on the front page of Mathrubhumi and in other leading Malayalam newspapers. His subjects ranged from party politics and government decisions, such as the state's liquor policy and the bar bribery controversy, to the environment, with work drawn during the Silent Valley and Plachimada agitations.

Krishnan was also a photographer and designer. His designs and illustrations appeared on the covers of magazines, weeklies and books, his photographs included rare portraits of the poets P. Kunhiraman Nair and T. Ubaid, and he presented drawing classes on television. He was a regular presence and organiser at cartoon camps across Kerala from the early 1980s, and served as vice chairman of the Kerala Cartoon Academy. In March 2016 he held his first solo exhibition, of around fifty cartoons spanning three decades, at Vyloppilly Samskrithi Bhavan in Thiruvananthapuram.

Krishnan was married to Mercy, a teacher, who appeared alongside him at the 2017 tribute in Kasaragod. He lived for many years at Sreekariyam in Thiruvananthapuram. Fellow cartoonists remembered him as a warm and generous figure who encouraged younger artists and often took on the work of organising camps and exhibitions.

Sakshi is regarded as one of the longest running political cartoon series in Malayalam journalism, a weekly witness to Kerala's public life from the late 1970s onward. Krishnan's spare style showed how much a cartoon could say with very little, and his work as a designer, photographer, teacher and Cartoon Academy office holder helped sustain cartooning as a craft in Kerala. His honours included the Kerala Cartoon Academy Fellowship (2007), the Cartoonist K. S. Pillai Award (2009) and the Cartoonist Sivaram Award.