The state's first woman election commissioner, Neela Satyanarayana, who died at 71 of COVID-19 on Thursday at a civic hospital in Mumbai, was a bureaucrat with nerves of steel. She played multiple roles of a caring mother to a special child, poetess and novelist, film music composer and a friend, philosopher and guide to many.

A saviour

She was a saviour for Shivaji Salunke, who served 14 years in jail on the charge of murdering his wife. Without letting him know, the officer had arranged for his daughter Nirmiti, then staying with her aged grandparents, to go to a better place for her education. Satyanarayana supported the girl and found her a hostel and school in Pune. Nirmiti became a lawyer and also earned a degree in journalism before getting married to an engineer in Pune in 2011. The couple has a two-year-old daughter.