Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh alleged here today that Sheikh Abdullah had arrested Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee without following a proper legal procedure and the subsequent detention of Mukherjee in a Kashmir jail for a protracted period of 44 days was also illegal.

Delivering a talk to commemorate the death anniversary of Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Dr Jitendra Singh recalled the sequence of events and said that Dr Mukherjee had arrived at Amritsar on 10th of May 1953 where he spent the night and the next day, i.e. on 11th of May, he left for Pathankot on way to Jammu and Kashmir.

Both, the then Chief Minister of Punjab Bhim Sen Sachar and the then Prime Minister Jammu & Kashmir Sheikh Abdullah, were aware of Mukherjee's travel plan. In fact, Dr Mukerjee had, in advance, also sent a telegram to Sheikh Abdullah, informing about his desire and plan to travel to Jammu and Kashmir.

Dr Jitendra Singh said, if Dr Mukherjee's only guilt was that he was trying to enter Jammu and Kashmir without a proper permit, the natural course of justice would have been to repatriate him, send him back to Punjab or prevent him from entering into the territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

The Sheikh Government, on the contrary, he said, acted in haste as if it was waiting to arrest Dr Mukherjee and put him behind the bars. Meanwhile, the then Chief Secretary of State M K Kidwai sent a telegram followed by letter to the Speaker of Lok Sabha to inform that Dr Mukherjee had been arrested under Section 3 of Public Security Act, he said.

Since Dr Mukherjee was an elected member of Lok Sabha from South Kolkata constituency, Dr Jitendra Singh said, the Sheikh Abdullah government apparently tried to follow the convention of informing the Lok Sabha Speaker about his arrest but no convention or procedure was followed while carrying out the arrest, nor was a proper trial carried out for the charges, if any, levelled against him.

Dr Mukherjee was mercilessly thrown behind the bars in a Srinagar jail, as if he was a criminal and during the 44 days of his stay in the jail, not a single representative of the State government showed the courtesy to visit him or inquire about him, he said.

Not only this, Dr Jitendra Singh recalled, on the 24th of May 1953 Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru and the then Union Home Minister K. N. Katju arrived at Srinagar as Sheikh Abdullah's guests but none of the three bothered to inquire about Mukherjee who was lodged in a jail just a few kilometers away.

Even when Dr Mukherjee breathed his last under mysterious circumstances early morning at 3.40 a.m. on 23rd of June 1953, the news of his death was held back for several hours and finally broadcast on All India Radio at 12.50 p.m.

This is, he said, on record of the parliament proceedings when the Member of Parliament S P Gidwani put this question to the then Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting B V Keskar, but the Minister had no answer for this. Not only this, when Mukherjee's body was airlifted from Srinagar without any formal respect or courtesy,the State government headed by Sheikh Abdullah refused to pay even the Indian Airlines fare of Rs.7548/-.

Even if it is conceded, Dr Jitendra Singh said, that Sheikh Abdullah followed the rule of justice in ordering the arrest of Dr Mukherjee, the question is why it took more than a month for the Sheikh government to take a decision about sending Mukherjee back.

Sheikh Abdullah, he recalled, had no answer to this and soon after Mukherjee's death on 23rd of June 1953, when Sheikh Abdullhah was asked the same question, his unconvincing reply was that since Prime Minister Nehru was on a foreign tour to Cairo, he was waiting for Nehru to return back to Delhi and thereafter release Mukherjee from jail. This reply by Sheikh Abdullah was not only unconvincing but it also smacked of dubious intentions and a dubious connivance between Nehru and Sheikh, he added.

Dr Jitendra Singh recalled that when Mukherjee's dead body was brought to Kolkata on 24th Jun 1953, a huge sea of humanity had gathered which was hurling the slogan "Zahar Diya, Kisne Diya? Shiekh ne diya Sheikh ne diya". No wonder, he said, there was no proper inquiry instituted to go into the reasons behind Mukherjee's mysterious death in spite of repeated requests from all quarters including Mukherjee's aging mother.