Author: Pinakpani Ghosh

On the morning of February 23, 2026, the phones of political workers, journalists and ordinary citizens across West Bengal began buzzing with condolence messages. Mukul Roy, the Chanakya of Bengal politics who had helped build the Trinamool Congress from scratch, had died at a Kolkata hospital after a prolonged battle with dementia and Parkinson’s disease. Somewhere, in a scam factory, a document was being edited simultaneously. Mukul’s name was being substituted into a pre-written template. His photograph was being added to a fabricated news banner carrying the masthead of The Indian Express. Within days of his death, a sponsored advertisement…