A 26-year-old model was found hanging in her Patuli home off Garia on the southern fringes of Kolkata early on Friday.
Police suspect Manjusha Niyogi committed suicide.
Over the past few weeks, model-turned-TV actors Pallavi Dey and Bidisha De Majumdar were reported to have committed suicide.
A lack of projects and the fear of unemployment could be the reasons that had driven Niyogi to death, the police said.
Many who are part of the TV industry in Bengal said the pandemic had left a large section of the industry unemployed.
“There were no major projects in the last two years. Not just actors... the entire crew was affected,” said film and TV actress Sanghasri Sinha Mitra.
“When the shoots slowly resumed, gatherings or shoots involving a large number of people were removed from the script because of pandemic rules. That left a lot of junior artistes unemployed.”
Things have improved since the worst days of the pandemic.
“But the struggle is very much on for newcomers,” said coordinator Suman Dutta, who is an agent for several model-actors, some of them from small towns looking for a break in Kolkata.
Mousumi Das, an actor who has been working in TV and films for close to a decade, said March to October 2020 was the worst phase of her life. Shooting had stopped completely. No work meant no pay. Her mother was diagnosed with cancer.
“Along with shooting for TV and films, ad shoots and corporate events had also stopped completely during the pandemic,” Das said.
She is now back to shooting “four days a week”.
But not everyone is as lucky as Das. For every actor working on a project now, there are several others who are waiting in queue.
Officers probing Pallavi Dey’s death said they found from her phone texts to several serial directors seeking work after the last TV serial she worked in ended this month.
Bidisha De Majumdar, too, mentioned in her purported suicide note that she was getting “three-four projects” a month, which were not enough to sustain EMIs and other expenses.
Cops said that while speaking to Niyogi’s family, it emerged that she was affected by the death of the two model-actresses whom she knew personally.
“After Pallavi’s death she expressed surprise to her mother. She had said that Pallavi had a lot more projects in hand than her but still chose to end her life. Bidisha’s death had left her rattled. She became very quiet after that,” said a senior officer who spoke to Niyogi’s family.
Niyogi, who had got married in November last year, had gone to her paternal home in Patuli earlier this week.
The police said her husband Ramnath Banerjee had gone to take her back home on Thursday evening but she had purportedly refused. The police said they had not received any complaint from Niyogi’s family.
3 vehicles damaged by truck
A private car and two two-wheelers were damaged after a truck hit them near Ballykhal in Howrah early on Friday, police said.
The truck was travelling from Uttarpara to Bally in Howrah when the driver lost control and mounted the vehicle on a footpath near Ballykhal after hitting the three vehicles around 12.45am on Friday.
The truck came to a halt on the footpath, the police said.
“The driver of the private car and those on the two-wheelers suffered injuries. They are being treated at hospital,” said a senior officer of Bally police station. “We have arrested the driver. The truck has been seized.”
“The stretch between Uttarpara and Bally remains prone to accidents particularly at night because of heavy movement of lorries,” said Anuradha Ghosh, a resident of Bally.
