Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj


Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj is an Indian journalist, documentary film maker and equal rights activist. Bhardwaj rose to prominence after producing a documentary—Martyrs of Marriage, which covered abuse of criminal section 498A by brides and their families. She also exposed a conspiracy of alleged victims in the Rohtak sisters viral video controversy by interviewing the witnesses and collecting proof.

Education and career

Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj graduated with a B.Tech from Technological Institute of Textile & Sciences in 2006. She also did a post-graduate Diploma in television journalism from Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media in 2009.
She worked as Software Engineer at Infosys during 2006 to 2008 before leaving the job to pursue film-making. Her first documentary film Gramin Dak Sevak was a student film winner at in 2009. She has been working as editorial consult at Exchange4Media since November 2010.

Activism

498-A and Martyrs of Marriage

Bhardwaj alleges to have been the victim of a false 498A case, after she and her cousin were charged under the provisions courtesy a police-complaint by her ex-sister-in-law; the issue was resolved in an off-court settlement involving a huge sum of money. This brought her into contacts with Save Indian Family Foundation, and she has since often collaborated with them in demanding an outright repeal of the law or amending to a gender-neutral version.
Women right groups and critics however note that the law has been already decriminalized to a large extent by the Supreme Court, and that relevant crime-statistics when coupled with extremely high rates of under-reporting necessitate its presence. The conviction rates were similar to other laws and given a high charge-sheet rate, did not corroborate with the MRA rhetoric about the law being mostly used to pursue outright frivolous complaints over trivial issues.
Bhardwaj's personal episode also went on to serve as the motivations for making a documentary on the locus. Martyrs of Marriage narrated first-person tales of various victims who alleged of being at the receiving ends of abuse of 498A and interviewed politicians, judges et al for their take on the issue.

False sexual harassment allegations

Bhardwaj campaigns against false sexual harassment allegations. She had supported the #Mentoo movement, a campaign that was started in response of false allegations of the #MeToo movement in India and wrote about how the me-too movement turned men into disposable or collateral damage, sacrificable at the altar of the idea of protecting women.
In the Rohtak sisters viral video controversy, she interviewed several witnesses and released videos that held the accusers of lying.

National Commission for Men

Bhardwaj campaigns for the establishment of a National Commission for Men in India that would deal with men's issues including domestic violence and sexual assault.