YSRGate

A couple of weeks ago, when news spread of people dying of shock or killing themselves after YSR’s death, I wrote:

It’s quite possible that many of these deaths, if not all, randomly happened around that time, and YSR’s people are building this narrative around them to embellish his legend. Why would a 19-year-old, with his whole life in front of him, kill himself because a political leader is dead? Fishy.

This could be the subject of a great farce. Imagine a novel that begins with the death of a political giant. His successors want to ensure that more people die on hearing this news than did for his predecessor. So they use the government machinery to set each district a target. Officials in those districts fan out looking for random deaths. [etc]

And today, Stochastix points me to this news:

Andhra Pradesh CM Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s death earlier this month sent shock waves across the state that reportedly claimed lives of
457 people, including 40 who committed suicide. Now, what appears to be macabre “dead body politics’‘, overzealous Congress workers are allegedly offering money to the families of the dead many of whom died natural deaths or committed suicides for other reasons to claim that YSR’s death pushed them into taking their lives.

Rule of thumb: any farce that appears too outlandish to be true probably is. Such it goes.