Bengali actor, former MP Tapas Paul dead
Kolkata, February 18
Veteran Bengali actor-turned-politician Tapas Paul, who metamorphosed from the persona of a boy-next-door to a romantic hero and also helped the TMC make a foray in the Kolkata’s film industry, died after a cardiac arrest in a Mumbai hospital early on Tuesday, family sources said. He was 61.
Paul’s death has led to a blame game, with the Trinamool Congress (TMC) holding the BJP-led Centre guilty of “mentally torturing” him and pursuing “political vendetta” against him, a charge rejected as “baseless” by the saffron party, which said the actor paid for the “sins” of his party who had used him as a scapegoat.
The two-time former Lok Sabha MP from West Bengal’s Krishnanagar had a long history of heart and neurological problems, and had been in and out of hospitals during the past two years, according to the sources.
Paul had gone to Mumbai in January to meet his daughter. He was rushed to the hospital on February 1 after he fell ill at the Mumbai airport on his way to the United States for treatment. He was on ventilator till February 6, his wife Nandini Paul, a TV personality, said.
“He was taken off the ventilator and was recovering. But suddenly, his condition worsened and he died of cardiac arrest around 3.30 am on Tuesday,” Nandini Paul added.
Paul is survived by his wife and daughter Sohini.
The actor-politician was born at Chandernagore in Hooghly district, an erstwhile French colony about 35 km from Kolkata. He graduated with bioscience from the Hooghly Mohsin College.
Paul shot to fame in 1980 with his debut film, Tarun Majundar’s “Dadar Kirti”, and left his mark on Bengali cinema with movies like “Saheb”, for which he was awarded the Filmfare Award in 1981, and “Guru Dakshina”. – PTI
