The new Indian crime documentary ‘The Burari Deaths On Netflix’ is based on a true story that shocked the nation. In the year 2018, on June 30th, eleven people were found hanging in the Capital city of our nation. While ten were found hanging, the oldest family member, the grandmother, was strangled.
The first episode of the docu-series on Netflix does a decent job of establishing the characters and why it is called ‘House of Secrets’. From what we gather from the initial investigation of the police, a case of murder was registered owing to the immense public scrutiny and pressure from certain media houses that are revealed in the docu-series.
The members were found hanging from a ceiling in the hall of their house, all close to each other. The faces were wrapped with clothes, ears plugged with cotton, hands tied behind the back with telephone wires, and mouths taped. Can you imagine the grotesque of this scene without the involvement of any third party? Read what we think of this crime documentary House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths On Netflix.
House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths
On Netflix
House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths On Netflix Story Development:
In the second episode, 11 diaries are found in the house, which was chronologically maintained for 11 consecutive years. The hanging positions of the 10 family members are in tandem with the ones instructed in the diary. It’s then discovered that the content in the diary was received by Lalit(the younger son of the family) through his father Bhopal Singh, somehow mysteriously, since he was long gone.
It is also mentioned in the diary that everyone should tie their hands, and at the end of the rituals, everyone should help each other to untie their hands.
This further clearly indicates that the family was clearly not expecting to die. The Patriarch of the family: While watching this docu-series, one realizes a patriarch’s roles in Lalit that were registered in the diary. Everyone had specific roles to play, according to Bhopal Singh. It is shown that Lalit had an accident in the past, a brutal one at that, as a consequence of which he had lost his sense of speech.
Further, he didn’t allow any one of the family to discuss what’s been brewing in the cauldron of the Bhatia family for 11 years. Do you see the stronghold the patriarch of the family has on the 10 other members? It’s quite unimaginable, to begin with.
The psychological aspects of the study reveal that he(Lalit) and the rest of the family were undergoing a shared sense of collective psychosis which lasted when Priyanka finally got engaged, and their secret could have been compromised. Religious angle and submission to blind faith:
It’s indeed sad and disheartening that 11 members of the family had to undergo a horrific scenario like this where there is a point of no return. Had there been one rational voice, there would surely have been a voice of dissent in the house. Also, this reflects on the collective vestigial state of mind encompassing the Bhatia family and the complete submission to what “God” and Bhopal Das(as God’s messenger) had asked the family to endure further.
The Psychological stance has revealed that Lalit suffered from a ‘delusional disorder,’ but where this series falls short is at a point where they fail to raise such questions, which further question blind faith and propagate the use of it to brainwash any generation that stands in its way.
All in all, House of Secrets is a spine-chilling narrative that urges the viewer to, in hindsight, question if something feels wrong. It also brings up the important and burning topic of mental health and the need for constructive dialogue and conversations to root out its stigma.
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