The ‘Secrets’ beyond a compelling Indian true-crime series
In House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths, Leena Yadav moulds the story about a tragedy into an active question of self-reflection for the larger society.
*Contains spoilers.
In the early hours of July 1, 2018, images that looked like scenes from a horror novel began circulating on Reddit and the dark web. Bodies of seven females and males, tied and blindfolded with telephone cables and chunnis, hanging from an iron-caged ventilation window in the ceiling of a house in New Delhi. The bodies hung side-by-side, as if orchestrated and curated to arouse a dramatic effect.
What followed was a case of mystery, intrigue, and drama at a real crime scene, one that quickly caught the attention of the nation. One that was finally uncovered in greater detail in Leena Yadav’s 2021 docuseries, House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths on Netflix.
The three-part limited series explores the curious case of the Burari deaths that overwhelmed New Delhi in July 2018, as 11 individuals of the Bhatia family were found hanging in the living room of their house in the capital’s Burari area. The bizarre nature of the incident brought the Delhi Police, several mainstream media houses, and even the AAP government to a standstill, as all parties descended to the small, cramped gullies of this peri-urban slum in North Delhi to verify for themselves the exact events that preceded the night before in the Bhatia household.
Naturally, the incident generated immense amounts of buzz. During the course of investigation, the pendulum of questions shifted back and forth to assess if the incident fell into the crevice of a homicide, suicide, or something more sinister. The series takes time to explore two unusual things: the first is the degree with which speculation about these deaths became the common norm. Informal roadside conversations and conspiracy theories about the same even made it to primetime television, as loud news anchors put on Sherlockian hats to attempt to untangle this case.
The second is how, corollary to the speculation, the simultaneous and perpetual awe and shock of the incident itself flooded the nation. This, over the course of time, is only amplified as it becomes clearer that the Burari deaths were not homicidal at all, and involved ‘voluntary’ participation of the family members.
The series also explores the idiocracy and the TRP-driven fanaticism that plagues much of primetime Indian news today. Through a series of interviews which included familiar media-industry faces like Barkha Dutta and Mukesh Senger, House of Secrets explores how the media circus takes events as tragic as this, and down-cycles them into TRP-driven nonsense in the guise of news. In a more dangerous sense, the response of the news channels to these sorts of tragedies also turns the watcher into a mindless, non-empathetic automated consumer, in a frenzy and over-satiated with gossip.
While the first part of the series, titled “11 Bodies”, explores and sets the context of the incident itself, it leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. It’s episode two, “11 Diaries”, which answers the viewers’ burning inquiries, and most of all, explains some of the ‘why’ behind this tragic event. The ‘why’ here is enough of a motivation for the viewer to hit the play button on our Netflix app.
By exploring the causality of this mass-suicide event, the series capitalises our curiosity and our need to understand human nature. Why would a seemingly ‘normal’ and well-to-do middle-class family—with children as young as 15—choose to end their lives willingly and collectively in this way?
House of Secrets explores how the media circus takes events as tragic as this, and down-cycles them into TRP-driven nonsense in the guise of news. In a more dangerous sense, the response of the news channels to these sorts of tragedies also turns the watcher into a mindless, non-empathetic automated consumer, in a frenzy and over-satiated with gossip.
The answer is unimaginable—and as the show hints itself—perhaps unsatisfactory for some. As the show progresses, it is revealed that it is the youngest son of the Bhatia family—Lalit—who claims to be acting on behalf of the will of their deceased father, exercises a deep unyielding control over the rest of his family. Lalit puppeteers them with a conviction that their father’s spirit possesses him and thus watches over the family. Their faith in this possession develops and is reaffirmed over time, as the family experiences upward economic mobility by following Lalit’s written scripture through said ‘diaries’. Ultimately, the family then takes on the final ritual of the ‘Badh Puja’ (Banyan Ritual) which requires them to tie themselves and hang from the ceiling—like the hanging roots of a banyan tree—believing that the holy spirit of their father will ultimately rescue them.
The rescue, of course, never comes. But the diaries found in the house do reveal the fact that the ceremony was not designed to create the impact it did. The Bhatia family wanted more from their lives. Then, does the nomenclature of ‘suicide’ really hold true? This question haunts the investigation team of the Delhi Police even today.
With the first episodes of the show, House of Secrets falls easily into the domain of a captivating true-crime documentary, of which there is no dearth on streaming platforms. What truly sets the show apart is the finale, titled ‘Beyond 11’. Here lies the true genius of Leena Yadav, its creator, who makes a conscious choice to explore the tragedy from the neglected lens of mental illness.
Indian society suffers from the plague of tabooing mental illness, and this taboo is reflected in the fact that, despite the enormous media coverage of the Burari Deaths, never before was this vantage brought to the surface. Yadav spends time to showcase how Lalit—the orchestrator of the ‘Badh Puja’—was himself a victim of severe PTSD and personality disorders, the results of which were his supposed incantations and visits from his deceased father. It is the inability of Lalit and his family to understand his mental illness that perhaps led to them encouraging and burying themselves in superstitious thought and practice, the price of which they paid with their lives.
With exceptional ability and sensitivity, Yadav moulds the final episode about this tragedy into an active question of self-reflection for the larger society. After grasping the viewer in the show’s hooks, she transforms the Bhatia family from a place of oddness, rumours and secretary, into relatability and compassion. As a bonus, her subtlety is executed in a way that leaves the viewer thinking and examining their own presumptions about Indian society, thus making for lasting impressionable cinema.
In the larger sense of things, House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths may perhaps stress for a bigger change in the production of Indian documentaries. The series has taken this genre of cinema—which generally falls into the bracket of Indie or alternative—and unraveled it to present to a palette of larger audiences. And despite these grand leaps, Yadav’s show portrays a sense of modesty and sensitivity, which had been missing so far in the coverage of the Burari deaths. One hopes that the series will set a precedent of making gripping cinema about the real world with real people, without betraying morality.
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Atulya Pathak is a Masters student of Development at Azim Premji University. Formerly she was a full-time teacher in a low-income school. She studied History at a prestigious All-Girls College in the University of Delhi. Her areas of interest are Mediocre Science Fiction shows, Indian Politics, Mental Health & the environment. You can find her on Instagram at: @sherbet_lemon9.
