Eminent author and niece of Jawaharlal Nehru, Nayantara Sehgal today returned the Sahitya Akademi award. Nayantara Sehgal said she was resigning in protest against increasing intolerance towards right to dissent in the country.<br/><br/>Citing various incidents of killings of writers and rationalists including M Kalburgi and Govind Pansare, she said that rationalists who question superstition are being marginalised, persecuted, or murdered.<br/><br/>Sehgal received Sahitya Akademi award in 1986 for her English novel 'Rich Like Us'.