Suresh said, “I did it yesterday.”
Which one of the following options is the correct form of this sentence in indirect speech?
Suresh said that I did it yesterday.
Suresh says I did it yesterday.
Suresh says that he did it the day before.
Suresh said that he had done it the day before.
ANSWER
(D) Suresh said that he had done it the day before.
Official answer: DSource: Official answer key, GATE 2026 IN (IIT Guwahati)
Keep the reporting verb as it is. The direct sentence has "said", so the indirect sentence must also begin "Suresh said". Converting to indirect speech does not change the tense of the reporting verb. That rules out (B) and (C), which change it to "says".
Change the pronoun to match the speaker. Suresh is talking about himself, so the first-person "I" inside the quote becomes the third-person "he" in reported speech. (A) keeps "I", which now reads as if the narrator did it, so (A) is out.
Backshift the tense. When the reporting verb is in the past ("said"), a simple past verb inside the quote moves back to the past perfect, so "did" becomes "had done".
Shift the time word. Reported later, "yesterday" is no longer measured from today, so it becomes "the day before" (or "the previous day").
Put it together: Suresh said that he had done it the day before. This is option (D) word for word. (D) is also the only option that applies all four changes (reporting verb kept, pronoun changed, tense backshifted, time word shifted).
KEY IDEA
To turn a quote into indirect speech with a past reporting verb, make four changes together: keep \"said\", change the pronoun to fit the speaker (I becomes he), move the tense one step back (simple past becomes past perfect), and shift the time word (yesterday becomes the day before).
WATCH OUT FOR
Making only some of the changes. (A) leaves the pronoun and the tense as they were. (C) shifts the time word to \"the day before\" but switches the reporting verb to \"says\" and keeps \"did\", which mixes present-tense reporting with past-tense shifts. The correct answer has to make every change at once.
From the GATE 2026 IN paper. Every question of this paper · Download the full paper · All 32 Grammar & vocabulary questions, with notes
