90-yr-old dad dies in hosp as HC hears daughter plea to meet him one last time
Times of India | 30 November 2025
Kolkata: A 90-plus-year-old Kolkata businessman passed away at a city hospital on Saturday afternoon even as the Calcutta High Court was in the middle of hearing a case filed by his daughter, alleging that she was not being allowed to visit him.
The daughter — also the former sister-in-law of a prominent ex-India cricketer — lives in Mumbai while the rest of the family is settled in Kolkata. She moved Justice Suvra Ghosh's court on Tuesday, seeking permission to visit her dad at the hospital. Justice Ghosh allowed her plea if her dad did not have any objection.
She went to the hospital on Friday but was told about a letter, bearing her dad's thumb impression, that did not give that consent. That prompted her to move a Calcutta HC division bench.
The bench — comprising Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty and Justice Partha Sarathi Chatterjee — convened on Saturday afternoon to decide on her plea on an urgent basis. But, even as the judges were hearing both sides of the story, news came that the nonagenarian had passed away at the hospital. The bearer of the news was the businessman's aged wife, who told the court of her husband's death on live video.
"The matter has become infructuous," the division bench ruled while dismissing the appeal. The daughter then sought for a direction to at least attend the last rites but the bench did not interfere as it was not the subject matter of the original appeal.
The mother's counsel, Srijib Chakraborty, confirmed that the ailing businessman refused to meet his daughter. The family alleged that the daughter did not take care of his dad and had put out a social media post that disturbed their mental peace.
The daughter, in her plea to the division bench, contended that there was no evidence to prove that the thumb impression on the letter (that denied her the right to meet her dad) was really her dad's. She also doubted the veracity of the letter, given his age and health and "the torture" he was being subjected to by her sister (the younger daughter).
The sisters are fighting another criminal case in a lower court.