List of Famous people who died in 2012

Trayvon Benjamin Martin was a 17-year-old African American from Miami Gardens, Florida, who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old Hispanic American. Martin had gone with his father on a visit to his father's fiancée at her townhouse at The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford. On the evening of February 26, Martin was walking back to the fiancée's house from a nearby convenience store. Zimmerman, a member of the community watch, saw Martin and reported him to the Sanford Police as suspicious. While on the call to police, Zimmerman began following Martin. Several minutes later, there was an altercation and Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.

John Demjanjuk was a Ukrainian-American who served as a Trawniki man and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, Majdanek, and Flossenbürg. Demjanjuk became the center of global media attention in the 1980s, when he was tried and convicted after being misidentified as "Ivan the Terrible", a notoriously cruel watchman at Treblinka extermination camp. Shortly before his death, he was again tried and convicted as an accessory to 28,000 murders at Sobibor.

Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab was a Pakistani militant and a member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamist militant organization, through which he took part in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks in Maharashtra, India. Kasab, alongside fellow Lashkar-e-Taiba recruit Ismail Khan, killed 72 people during the attacks, most of them at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus. Kasab was the only attacker captured alive by police.

Verghese Kurien, known as the "Father of the White Revolution" in India, was a social entrepreneur whose "billion-litre idea", Operation Flood, made dairy farming India's largest self-sustaining industry and the largest rural employment sector providing a third of all rural income. It made India the world's largest milk producer, doubled the milk available for each person, and increased milk output four-fold in 30 years.

Ravi Shankar, whose name is often preceded by the title Pandit (Master), was an Indian sitar virtuoso and a composer. He was the best-known proponent of the sitar in the second half of the 20th century and influenced many other musicians throughout the world. Shankar was awarded India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1999.

Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. was a United States Army general. While serving as the commander of United States Central Command, he led all coalition forces in the Gulf War.

Robin Hugh Gibb was a British singer, songwriter and record producer, who gained worldwide fame as a member of the pop group the Bee Gees with older brother Barry and fraternal twin brother Maurice. Robin Gibb also had his own successful solo career. Their younger brother Andy was also a singer.

Sage Moonblood Stallone was an American actor, film director, producer, and cofounder of Grindhouse Releasing. He was the elder son of actor Sylvester Stallone.

Walter "Johnny D." McMillian was an African-American pulpwood worker from Monroeville, Alabama, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His conviction was wrongfully obtained, based on police coercion and perjury; in the 1988 trial, under a controversial doctrine called "judicial override", the judge imposed the death penalty, even though the jury imposed a sentence of life imprisonment. From 1990 to 1993, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals turned down four appeals; in 1993, after McMillian had served six years on Alabama's death row, the Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the lower court decision and ruled that he had been wrongfully convicted.

Mona Shourie Kapoor was the daughter of Sattee Shourie and the first wife of Bollywood film producer, Boney Kapoor. She has a son, Bollywood actor Arjun Kapoor and daughter Anshula Kapoor.