Kolkata: Twenty-nine years ago, Calcutta University’s assistant controller of examination Manisha Mukherjee disappeared without a trace. Her devastated mother blamed the leaders of the ruling party, CPI(M). New Bengali political thriller Korpur (Camphor) has fictionalised the incident, bringing back memories of one of the biggest political scandals to rock Kolkata. It also reopened an old debate around mixing cinema with politics.
Directed by Arindam Sil and starring Rituparna Sengupta as Moushumi Sen, a character loosely based on Manisha Mukherjee, the film, released on 19 March, is being discussed in Kolkata at a time when electioneering has reached fever pitch. The next Assembly elections in the state are slated for the end of the month.
What is also a sore point among some critics is the fact that the three main characters in the film are being played by three prominent members of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC). Bratya Basu, West Bengal Minister for Education, is contesting the 2026 Assembly election from the Dum Dum constituency, TMC leader and spokesperson Kunal Ghosh is contesting from the Beleghata constituency, and councillor Ananya Banerjee.
“It is inspired and based on a fiction, and any similarity with any real-life incident is purely coincidental and fictitious,” Sil told PTI, sidestepping the controversy.
Mystery of missing Manisha
Korpur is based on Dipanwita Roy’s novel Antardhaner Nepothye, which fictionalises the unsolved 1997 disappearance of Manisha Mukherjee.
She disappeared from the Golpark area in South Kolkata on 3 September 1997. After her husband got out of the taxi she was travelling in, Mukherjee reportedly instructed her nephew to get down at Golpark before the taxi sped away. That was the last time Mukherjee was seen.
“While investigating the case, the police traced a bank officer with whom Manisha had an affair. His rented flat in Jodhpur Park was searched, and the man was questioned. But no clue emerged about the missing woman,” a Telegraph report noted on 29 November 1999. “A south Calcutta nursing home, where Manisha was reportedly admitted after she went missing, was also searched. But the trail went cold.”
The police claimed Mukherjee was sighted in the Kamakhya temple in Assam, dressed in a monk’s habit. “We are sending a team to bring her back,” Deputy Commissioner (Detective Department) Narayan Ghosh had told the press.
But extensive search operations failed to track her or solve the mystery of Mukherjee’s disappearance, leaving behind a trail of questions “which showed many CPI(M) leaders in poor light”.
“The investigation, which had literally been closed for want of clues, is being reopened after some photographs of Manisha were recovered from a box in her house by her mother,” a report said. Manisha Mukherjee’s mother, Chinu Mukherjee, had handed over an envelope containing 30 pictures of Mukherjee with colleagues, including former controller of examination Gopal Banerjee.
The 40-year-old assistant controller of the examination’s disappearance had sent Kolkata’s rumour mills into overdrive. It wasn’t just because the police failed to solve the case but also because of her alleged closeness to CPI(M) heavyweights.
In the film Korpur, Kunal Ghosh’s character seems to be loosely based on then CPI(M) state secretary Anil Biswas, one of the most powerful leaders at the time. However, Ghosh has denied it. “It is based on a political thriller. I am acting as the state secretary of a political party. But that doesn’t mean that I am playing Anil Biswas,” he said in an interview.
But with three TMC leaders playing principal characters in the film, the timing of its release is being cited by a section of critics to allege a political motive.
Also read: How Naxal film Adamya has caused a political buzz in West Bengal
Good film, bad timing?
Most critics have called Korpur an engaging political thriller.
“Korpur does not shout to be heard, but instead draws you in, steadily and deliberately, until you find yourself completely entangled in its web. As a political thriller, it resists the lure of excess and leans instead into atmosphere, character and the slow, unsettling drip of truth,” t2online wrote.
But for Sayantan Ghosh, who recently released a book on Bengal elections titled Battleground Bengal, the film reflects how cinema is being increasingly used as a tool of political narrative building in India.
“The film features TMC leaders Bratya Basu and Kunal Ghosh, along with a party councillor, blurring the lines between politics and cinema,” Ghosh told ThePrint.
Ghosh finds casting of members of West Bengal’s ruling dispensation in the film as actors to be less coincidental and more calculated. “Korpur has come at a time when any CPI (M) resurgence could cut into minority votes, which would directly affect TMC electorally,” Ghosh said.
Korpur is not the first film to go political before the polls. In the run-up to the national elections in 2024, issues like political corruption and the threat of Islamic radicalisation made it to the movies. And they had actor-turned-politicians, too, in them.
First came Raktabeej (Seeds of Blood), released in October 2023 and starring Trinamool Congress MP Mimi Chakraborty—a political-family drama set in Burdwan that delved into the theme of homegrown terror plots. Soon after, Bengali superstar and TMC leader Dev Adhikari played an upright cop, Deepak Pradhan, drawn into a world of education scams, land grabs, and vote-rigging during panchayat polls—the issues that had plagued the ruling TMC during elections.
And now comes Korpur. “The fight this election is between the ruling TMC and the BJP. The Left vote is anyway minimal. The main motive for the makers seems to be the story that is still interesting so many years after Manisha Mukherjee disappeared,” senior film journalist Bhaswati Ghosh told ThePrint.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)