Punjab declares two-day mourning for S.S. Ray

CHANDIGARH - The Punjab government Sunday declared state mourning Nov 7-8 as a mark of respect to former governor Siddhartha Shankar Ray who died in Kolkata Saturday following illness.

A Punjab government spokesperson said the national flag would fly at half-mast on all public buildings and no official entertainment programme would be held during the two days.

Ray was Punjab governor from April 1986 to December 1989, during which the Khalistani terrorist movement was at its peak in the state.

He along with top police official K.P.S. Gill, who took over as Punjab police chief in 1988, succeeded in considerably weakening militants in the state.

Ray was born in 1920 in a well-to-do family of south Kolkata. His father Sudhir Kumar Ray was a legal luminary while his mother Aparna Devi was Deshbandhu C.R. Das’s eldest daughter.

Himself a great barrister, Ray was one of the close advisors of then prime minister Indira Gandhi and one of the architects of the Emergency declared on June 25, 1975