While at Bhagalpur, Singh undertook a fast unto death as a protest against what he thought were the prevailing inhuman conditions in jail. On the 12th day of the fast he was moved to Gaya Central Jail and kept in solitary confinement. Soon he was shifted to the jail's hospital. All efforts of forced feeding him failed, Sir Ganesh Dutt, the then minister of Bihar, asked Singh's mother, Daulat Kher, to attend to urge him to give up his fast. When she attended, on the 50th day of the fast, she blessed him.