Bengaluru: Veteran freedom fighter, Vedic scholar and centenarian Pundit Sudhakar Chaturvedi passed away on Thursday. He is believed to be 123 years old and was thus considered the oldest India.

Though his date of birth could not be independently verified, it is said that he was born on April 20, 1897, in Kyatasandra of Tumakuru district.

Chaturvedi was living with his grandchildren in Jayanagar and he breathed his last in his sleep around 3 am on Thursday.

Chaturvedi grew up in Bengaluru and he was sent to Kangadi Gurukul in Haridwar in 1915, where he studied Vedas.

Chaturvedi was not his surname, while it was a title that he earned after he mastered all the four Vedas.

Chaturvedi had met Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and socialist revolutionary Bhagat Singh was Chaturvedi’s student in Lahore, it is said.

An eyewitness to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, Chaturvedi had performed the last rites of thousands of Quit India movement activists, who were massacred in Jallianwala Bagh. He was also imprisoned for 12 long years at Yarawada prison in Pune by the British for his involvement in the freedom movement, reports TNIE.

He has penned over 50 books in Sanskrit, Kannada, Hindi and English and has interpreted Vedas in 20 volumes.

Chaturvedi had adopted a Dalit boy and had named him Aryamitra.

The final rites of the scholar were held in a crematorium in Chamarajpet.