List of Famous people who died at 61

Shanti Devi, known as Lugdi Devi in her past life, was an Indian woman who claimed to remember her previous life, and became the subject of reincarnation research. A commission set up by the Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi supported her claim, while another report by researcher Bal Chand Nahata disputed it. Subsequently, several other researchers interviewed her, and published articles and books about her.

Saad Mohammed Raheem (1957–2018) was an Iraqi writer.

Reda Mahmoud Hafez Mohamed was the commander of the Egyptian Air Force. Mohamed was also the minister for military production in the interim cabinet led by Prime Minister Hazem Al Beblawi.

Xiao Xiaolin was a TV host and anchorwoman in mainland China and a native of Changsha, Hunan.

Jarallah Omar al-Kuhali was a Yemeni politician, intellectual, and guerrilla fighter. He was trained in Islamic law, but in the 1960s he turned towards Marxism. He was a political prisoner from 1968 to 1971 and participated in the civil war between North Yemen and South Yemen as a leader of the National Liberation Front, a politico-military coalition affiliated to the socialist government of the South. He escaped to the South after his forces were defeated by then-North Yemeni President and current unified Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Omar became a member of the Politburo of the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), the ruling party in the South, and was named minister of culture in the government of a newly unified Yemen in the early 1990s. He resigned his cabinet post and went into exile shortly before a failed attempt by former southern politicians to re-establish a "Democratic Republic of Yemen" in 1994. The president of the ephemeral secessionist regime, Ali Salim al-Baidh, was a former ally of Omar in the factional disputes within the YSP in 1986. When Omar returned to the country in 1995, he developed a reputation as a leading advocate of human rights and political freedoms in the authoritarian political climate of Yemen.

Eid Abu Jarir (1910-1971) was a Sufi shaykh who founded the eponymous Jaririya Sufi order in Sinai, Egypt. Alongside his teacher Abu Ahmed al-Ghazawi, who founded the Alawi-Ahmadi tariqah, he is considered one of the founders of Sufism in the Sinai Peninsula. He was a member of the Jarir clan of the al-Sawarka tribe. The main three Sufi lodges he established, starting in the winter of 1953-1954, are the Sa’ud lodge in Sharqia, the Arab lodge in Ismailia, and the Rawdah lodge in North Sinai, the last of which was attacked in the 2017 Sinai mosque attack. He was part of the Sinai Mujahideen, which fought against Israel alongside the Egyptian military in the 1967 to 1970 War of Attrition. He was driven out of North Sinai in the 1960s, and lived the rest of his life and has his tomb in Sa'ed, El Husseiniya, near Cairo. Under law number 118 for the year 1976, his Jariri order is officially registered by the Egyptian government.

Salih Nur Neftçi was a leading expert in the fields of financial markets and financial engineering. He served many advisory roles in national and international financial institutions, and was an active researcher in the fields of finance and financial engineering. Neftçi was an avid and highly regarded educator in mathematical finance who was well known for a lucid and accessible approach towards the field.

Rustum Ghazaleh also transl. from Arabic as Rostom Ghazale, Rustom Ghazalah, Rustom Ghazali; was a Syrian military and intelligence officer.