And that is the other layer-how much do we as spectators contribute to the playing out of the macabre in society. Rahman, makes it a shockfest you cannot log out of. The eerie voiceover, and the haunting music by A.R. The neighbours, extended family and friends, and even employees praise them as a ‘close-knit family’ that ‘went to the temple twice a day’ (Episode 1).īut how does one suspect? We like to say ‘ aapne kaam se matlab rakho’ when domestic violence cases keep rising in our country, and it is always ‘ apas ka mamla hai’ when anything happens. The Chundawats could almost feature in a Sooraj Barjatya film. No one suspected anything, least of all that a ‘normal’ family could have a 11-year-long history of collective psychosis. This sentence is a refrain throughout Burari Deaths series. But it reins you in, stops you just when you are about to cross the threshold, and makes you realise, no matter what happened, we cannot simply be voyeurs to a tragedy.Īlso read: Delhi family of 11 hanged itself to ‘thank gods for manglik daughter’s marriage’ It is probably the subject, or even the lack of extreme sensationalism that we have gotten used to, thanks to a section of Indian media, or even Bollywood.
The documentary in itself, though similar in ways to others like Making A Murderer, The Keepers and Conversations with a Serial Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, also manages to be its own genre. After all, the media circus back in 2018 ensured, unless actively avoided, that one could not really skip knowing what was happening in the case. Just like Delhi Crime, another Netflix show based on the 2012 gangrape and murder in the capital, in Burari Deaths, the viewer feels like she is going behind the scenes, and the yellow tape. The anticipation does not come from the outcome in the series, because that is known, but the process itself. In an investigative style, the docuseries takes us to the day of the murder, builds up how the deaths were discovered and how the investigation even went off-course before the jackpot discovery of the 11 handwritten diaries spanning a duration of 11 years. The grandmother was found strangled in another room.
Ten of the family members were hanging, bound and gagged, in a circular formation from a mesh separating the ground floor from the floor above. The Chundawat family, which consisted of a matriarch, her daughter, two sons and their families, was found dead by a neighbour on 1 July 2018. The mini-series revisits the deaths of 11 members of a joint family in northeast Delhi’s Burari. The Netflix series, directed by Leena Yadav and co-directed by Anubhav Chopra, has three episodes and it reopens the case file with the help of police and journalists. This week, the Delhi Police finally filed a closure report in the case and said there was no ‘foul play’Īlso read: Scary to neighbours, home to families - Burari house fights horror tag 2 yrs after 11 deaths The horrific assault on Lalit, the younger son, that should have been addressed by a mental health professional, was instead addressed through superstition and religion.Īs journalists, police, neighbours, friends and even family try to make sense of what happened, it is clear that despite the case being closed, there are no real answers to be found. The root of the event isn’t supernatural, it’s mental health. Netflix documentary House of Secrets: Burari Deaths brings back the surreal incident that reigned supreme on all forms of media and social media for months on end.īurari Deaths is scary because it can happen to anyone. The Burari deaths in 2018 created tremors that reverberated across India, and as someone who lived just a few kilometres away in Delhi, I could not really escape the horror.