[citation needed] He was arrested for his support of Indian independence and died in Lucknow prison jail in 1944, leaving behind his wife (Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit) and their three daughters Chandralekha Mehta, Nayantara Sehgal and Rita Dar.

[citation needed] Sahgal attended a number of schools as a girl, given the turmoil in the Nehru family during the last years (1935–47) of the Indian freedom struggle.

[4] Sahgal has been married twice, first to Gautam Sehgal and later to Edward Nirmal Mangat Rai, a Punjabi Christian who was an Indian Civil Service officer.

[8][9][10] Gita Sahgal, the writer and journalist on issues of feminism, fundamentalism, and racism, director of prize-winning documentary films, and human rights activist, is her daughter.

[11] On 6 October 2015, Sahgal returned her Sahitya Akademi Award to protest what she called "increasing intolerance and supporting right to dissent in the country", following the murders of rationalists Govind Pansare, Narendra Dabholkar and M. M. Kalburgi, and the Dadri mob lynching incident;[12] for this she was praised in 2017 by Karima Bennoune, United Nations monitor for cultural rights.