Abhijit Mukherjee denied rumours about his father’s condition
NEW DELHI: Less than a week before former President Pranab Mukherjee went on ventilator support, he had called up his son with a request. “Kaathal niye aaye (bring me some jackfruit),” he had told Abhijit, his politician son in Bengali, longing for a bit of home.
“I went to our village, Mirati (in West Bengal’s Birbhum district), from Kolkata to get jackfruit for him. It was a ripe 25kg fruit. I took a train to Delhi on August 3 and met him… Baba and I both love train journeys,” Abhijit, 60, told TOI at his Greater Kailash residence in New Delhi.
Abhijit added, “He had some jackfruit that day. Thankfully, his sugar didn’t go up. He was so happy… He was not sick then.” But a week later, he suddenly was. The former president underwent surgery for removal of a blood clot from his brain and, before that, had tested positive for Covid-19.
“Since he had served as defence minister, his medical records had been maintained by Army doctors. So he was taken to the Army’s Research and Referral Hospital in Delhi Cantonment. I have been able to see him four times, with PPE and protective measures in place. He was breathing naturally when I last saw him,” he said.
Mukherjee, 84, remained deeply comatose on Thursday. “He would always ask about Dino, Tyson and Jacky,” Abhijit said, referring to dogs his daughter Suchismita, Pranab’s granddaughter, had rescued.
