The Burari deaths: new Netflix series spotlights one of Indias most notorious crimes
Table Of Content
He used to tell his family members that he saw his father in his dream. He said that his father had told him to recite a particular prayer at a specific time, and by doing that, his voice would come back. It did come back, and he won the trust of his family members. They believed that he actually used to see his father. That was the entry point to the shared psychotic disorder that the family was literally coerced into. Yadav, like the rest of the nation was left flabbergasted by the sheer horror of it all.
Role of Lalit
The police ruled their deaths as a mass suicide motivated by the shared delusion that Lalit’s late father was communicating with the family through him. Lalit, a financial provider in the family, had previously suffered traumatic experiences (both physical and psychological) for which psychiatric help had been recommended but not pursued. Following a near death experience, he became functionally mute. A year later, he spontaneously regained his voice during the family’s daily Hanuman Chalisa (a Hindu devotional hymn) recital, one of the practices written in their diaries. The film captures the media’s fascination, engaging their loved ones in a debriefing of sort, to understand what went wrong with this seemingly normal family.
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House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths – Review Netflix - Heavenofhorror.com
House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths – Review Netflix.
Posted: Fri, 08 Oct 2021 07:00:00 GMT [source]
“We now know that there was one family member behind this who had his own history, but that’s just the surface. I’d like to believe he was just the trigger; it doesn’t explain everything. Perhaps the other ten family members had their own history that made them so vulnerable? They included children, women and men aged 12 to 80.
House of Secrets The Burari Deaths review: Netflix show goes beyond gory details, re-examines case that gripped nation
The use of original footage throughout the series is impressive, capturing the harsh and at times incendiary spotlight the media shone on the local community. The tension and agitation in the air is palpable as more than 5,000 people swarmed the lanes daily, some to gawp, others to demand answers the police weren’t ready or able to give. All were filming endless footage on their mobile phones. It also said a lot about the basic perceptions people have about mental health. Going to the psychiatrist for therapy is not something that is seen in a good light because, guess what, only psychos and insane people visit psychiatrists! Toxic masculinity and orthodox viewpoints have always overpowered the need to cater to one’s mental health.
Storyline
Eleven members of the Bhatia family (also known as the Chundawats) were dead inside. Ten hanging from a metal grate in the ceiling, colourful saris wrapped around their necks; while the eldest, the grandmother Narayani Devi, 80, lay on her side nearby. On the roof, the family’s dog Tommy had been tied up, left to bark himself hoarse in the sun. Netflix’s latest limited series shines a light on the Burari deaths, a case which held the whole of India in its grip in the summer of 2018, when 11 members of the Bhatia family were found dead in their home. Leena does touch upon the accident and attack on Lalit that left him voiceless for some time before apparently becoming the source of his dead father’s voice, but avoids digging into the role of staunch religious belief in the case.
The northeastern locality of Delhi claimed a top spot in the drawing discussion of every household in the country. But speculations and conspiracy theories were not enough for the already tarnished image of the Delhi Police force. Lalit’s mental and emotional hold over the family had grown like a cancer since his father's death. Tangents go off into the role of the Indian media and sensationalist reporting around the crime. Everything from numerology to soul possession is given the kind of airtime that is usually the remit of QAnon conspiracists, and the series is right to point out the danger this kind of “reporting” presents. At one point, the family’s plumber’s daughter undergoes trial by media, accused of being a “tantrik” because her father installed 11 pipes in the Bhatia house and 11 people died inside it.
The Burari deaths: new Netflix series spotlights one of India’s most notorious crimes
Police investigations at the time, gleaned from the diaries, had revealed how the primary source of all the delusion was a relatively young family member with a history of untreated trauma. There’s an aura of opportunism about these two cops, and it wouldn’t at all be surprising if they continue telling stories about the Burari deaths well into retirement. They weren’t exactly involved in the investigation, but just happened to be posted at the right ‘thaana’ at the right time. In a keenly-observed moment that the filmmakers cleverly choose to retain in the show, the cop cuts a call by telling the person on the other end that he is busy shooting a documentary. Amidst all the hullabaloo, the investigating officers struck gold. That’s when the picture became a tad bit clearer.
The Head Constable Rajiv Tomar said that when he entered the house, he saw 11 people hanging from the ceiling, which felt like the hanging roots of a banyan tree. For 11 years, this had been going on under the nose of quite an indulgent neighborhood. This was not some residential space in North Dallas where anything that is happening inside the ranches wouldn’t be known to the neighbors. This was in the middle of an overly crowded area where the population would have been more than thirty thousand people per square kilometer. This very fact made the psychiatrists even more amused and made them think the kind of impact that Lalit would have had on a 15-year-old kid, that he believed all this to be true without even questioning it once. Lalit was the youngest among all the siblings but still was the head of the family and controlled most of the things.
11 Bodies
This docuseries examines chilling truths and theories around the deaths of 11 members of a Delhi family.Suicide, murder or something else? Through the evidence gathered, cult-like religious practices in the family were revealed. It seems they were conducting a ritual in their home, which involved creating symbolic representations of the hanging roots of a Banyan tree, a sacred tree mentioned in Hindu mythology. The ritual was elaborately described in one of the diaries found by the police in their home. Lalit Chundawat, one of the members of the family, believed he had been visited by the spirit of his father, the head of household who had died in 2007.
The interplay of light and darkness is an apt visual metaphor to revisit the deaths of 11 members of a family that shook the nation’s conscience in July 2018. Not since the Nithari killings or the Arushi double murder case had a crime story made national news so rapidly. Call it a coincidence, or purely my ignorance of other major stories of this kind, but each of these three cases happened in and around New Delhi. Jacky, the pet dog of the family, was the only survivor in the house.[15] He was chained on the terrace and had a high fever when the police found him after discovering the 11 bodies.[16] It was not clear who tied him. He was later said to have been convalescing at Noida's House of Stray Animals, where he was taken immediately after being rescued.
Around 2007 Lalit started showing signs of schizophrenia. He told his family that he was possessed and that their father was trying to talk to them. The family grew financially after paying heed to Lalit’s advice, and somehow Lalit won over the blind trust of not only his siblings but the younger generation too.
It didn’t strike the family even once that Lalit was suffering from PTSD or required therapy. Had he been intervened when the first signs were showed then today the family might not have met such a fateful end. Lalit didn’t talk for a year after the trauma, and people believed that he had lost his voice.
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