Rishi Sunak’s Indian mother-in-law has revealed border staff thought she was pranking them about staying in Downing Street during a visit to the UK.
Sudha Murty, wife of billionaire Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy, said she wrote down the historic address on a form.
She told the Kapil Sharma chat show that the border guard looked at her and said: ‘Are you joking?’
‘I told him, no, I’m telling you the truth,’ Ms Murty – mother of the PM’s wife Akshata – went on.
‘No one believes that I, a 72-year-old simple lady, can be the mother-in-law of the Prime Minister.’
Ms Murty hit the headlines last month when she credited her daughter with steering Mr Sunak into No10.
Sudha Murty, wife of billionaire Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy and mother of the PM’s wife Akshata, was appearing on the Kapil Sharma chat show in India
Ms Murty said after she wrote down Downing Street – where her daughter Akshata lives with Rishi Sunak (pictured) – as her temporary address on a form the border guard looked at her and said: ‘Are you joking?’
The philanthropist and author proclaimed that she was ‘able to succeed in making my husband a businessman’.
She added with great pride: ‘But my daughter has made her husband Prime Minister of the UK.’
Ms Murty also disclosed that she had persuaded Mr Sunak to fast every Thursday in honour of a Hindu guru the family worship.
Akshata has praised her mother for teaching her the values of ‘hard work, humility and selflessness’.
Ms Murty was the only female student at an engineering college she studied at in the late 1960s in Karnataka and was admitted on the condition that she only ever wore a sari, never spoke to male students and did not visit the canteen.
In 1974, she became the first female engineer to be hired by the TATA group, India’s leading auto manufacturer and worked in Pune, south India after famously writing to the firm’s boss to complain about the fact that they did not hire females.
She gave up a scholarship to study in the US so that she could be a ‘champion’ for Indian women in the engineering industry.
After meeting her husband, she helped him set up consulting and IT services firm Infosys in 1981.
It is now worth around £50billion, with Akshata’s stake valued at hundreds of millions of pounds.