India, May 4 -- A young woman doctor was raped and murdered inside a seminar room of a government medical college. Her parents sat vigil outside the hospital, broken and grieving. The state did not stand with them. It tried to manage the story. Allegedly, they slowed the investigation and tampered with evidence. Protect its own.

For fourteen years, Mamata Banerjee ruled West Bengal the way no politician in independent India's history had - simultaneously the goddess of street agitation and the undisputed feudal empress of a state she had personally wrenched from the Left's iron grip. On Monday morning, May 4, 2026, that era ended. The ballot box delivered its verdict with brutal finality.

By mid-morning on counting day, the BJP had cros...