Is your online social circle as safe as you think?

The Essentials

• Rheea Mukherjee documents her personal experience of being emotionally and financially conned by a close friend within India’s activist community.
• The paperback is priced at ₹499 and is available across major Indian bookstores and online platforms from May 2026.
• Readers gain a rare, primary-victim perspective on how digital trust is weaponised through shared social values and collective guilt.

The Pulse

Rheea Mukherjee was one of thousands who believed Sanch, a prominent Dalit activist, was dying of lung cancer. The reality was a sophisticated digital ruse that saw money and emotional labour poured into a lie. Liar, Liar does not just recount the scam; it interrogates why the Indian urban activist space was so easy to manipulate.

The book arrived at a time when digital fraud in India has moved beyond simple phishing calls into the realm of “prestige scams”. Mukherjee explores the specific vulnerability of those who navigate social justice circles on social media, where questioning a comrade’s struggle is often seen as a betrayal of the cause itself.

How did the Sanch scam happen in India? The memoir answers this by dissecting the intersection of caste identity, illness, and the performative nature of online compassion. Mukherjee’s writing remains grounded in the Bengaluru creative scene, making the betrayal feel uncomfortably local for anyone who spends time on Indian Twitter or Instagram.

The Snapshot

The Big Picture

The Indian true crime genre is currently dominated by sensationalist accounts of gangsters or historical murders, but Mukherjee’s memoir signals a shift towards “soft-tissue” digital crimes. While international audiences have flocked to stories like The Tinder Swindler, India’s digital landscape is unique because of how deeply identity politics and community crowdfunding are intertwined. Mukherjee’s account sits alongside investigative reports by journalists like those at The Swaddle or Scroll.in, focusing on the psychological cost of fraud rather than just the police procedural.

The India Prospective

At ₹499, this is a standard investment for a contemporary Indian trade paperback, costing less than a weekend meal for the urban professional it describes. It is widely available on Amazon.in and through Kindle for immediate digital access. For the Bengaluru-based reader, the book carries additional weight as it features Mukherjee’s own branding collective, Moonbird Creative, and the city’s specific social geography, making the events feel less like a distant news report and more like a warning for your own social circle.

The Inside Intel

While the book focuses on the “Sanch” scandal, Rheea Mukherjee actually wrote it to argue for trust rather than against it. Despite the financial and emotional devastation, she concludes that living with a “closed fist” to avoid being scammed is a worse fate than the risk of being conned again.

The UDHQ. Take

Unbox Daily HQ. suggests that if you have ever donated to a medical fundraiser on social media, you should read this. For the price of a couple of coffees, you get a masterclass in how modern digital manipulation works in an Indian context. The specific value here is not just the “gossip” of the scam, but the intellectual breakdown of how our own empathy is used against us. Mukherjee’s honesty about her own mistakes makes this a grounded, necessary guide for the digital age. This is the most relevant piece of Indian non-fiction you will pick up this quarter.

Best for: 25 to 45-year-old professionals in cities like Bengaluru and Mumbai who are active in online social justice or community spaces.

Who Is This For: Perfect for 28 to 40-year-olds in urban India who use social media for community building and want to understand the mechanics of digital emotional fraud.

The Checkout

Liar, Liar – Amazon

Source

HarperCollins India