‘My father knocked out my mother’s teeth’: Bigg Boss 5’s Sidharth Bhardwaj on growing up as a ‘hitman’s son’

Sidharth shared that his mother played a crucial role in pulling the family out of that environment.

DISCLAIMER: This article contains accounts of domestic violence, physical abuse, and childhood trauma. If you or someone you know is struggling with the emotional impact of past or present abuse, please know that support is available

“When I was born, my mother told him, ‘Billu, we can’t raise him here.’ So my father left everything behind because he didn’t want me growing up in that environment.”

But while the move changed their surroundings, it did not immediately change his father. “He left physically, but mentally and emotionally, he never really moved on. My father moved out of a gangster village; his whole identity was tied to that life. Suddenly, he left all that for his child, but he couldn’t fully detach. He would go back to the village every day and sit outside with his old friends.”

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Father’s accident when Sidharth was nine-year-old

A traumatic incident soon changed their lives further. “When I was around 9 years old, someone threw my father from the sixth floor in Rohini, Delhi.”

The fall left his father severely injured, forcing the family into a long and difficult phase. “After that, my father was bedridden for five years, with rods all over his body. My mother started working. My mother would wake up at 5 or 6 am, carry my father to the bathroom by herself, clean him, bathe him, put him back on the bed, cook for us, send us to school, and then go to work—9 kilometers away. She would save money by not taking a rickshaw so she could make mutton bone soup for my father. I remember asking her for a slingshot that cost Rs 7, and she would say, ‘Not today, I don’t have money.’ That’s the environment I grew up in.”

While his mother rebuilt the family’s life from scratch, his father struggled to cope with the shift in roles and identity.

“My father was a very disturbed man. Once he recovered, he actually had everything because my mother had built it all within 5–6 years. She had started with a job that paid Rs 900 a month, distributing advertising pamphlets, and six years later, my mom owned an advertising agency.”

Father’s violent behaviour

However, this transformation brought its own challenges.

“My mom created everything, but he couldn’t accept it. He had been a gangster, then became bedridden, and when he got back up, life had completely changed. His wife was earning more than him, his children were growing, and he was struggling to find his own identity. So he became very violent. He punched my mother and knocked out all her teeth in front of my eyes. Every day felt like a struggle.”

The violence, he revealed, became a recurring part of their daily lives. “We would be asleep, and my father would wear his boots and kick my mother in the stomach while she was sleeping. We used to sleep with the door locked, but he would still do this again and again. We hid all of this from the outside world. At school, we would pretend everything was fine, hiding that we were being beaten at home, and that we would be beaten again when we returned. In a way, we had already died back then. Now, we don’t feel anything anymore.”

When Sidharth hit his father

Sidharth also spoke about the physical abuse he endured. “He used to also hit me a lot. He hit my sister too, but less—he loved her a lot.”

The situation eventually reached a breaking point when he was a teenager.

“I hit him back once when I was 16. It had become too much. I couldn’t watch him hit my mother anymore. Something inside me snapped. I felt that if I didn’t hit him back, he would never stop. So I took the chain of my dog and hit my father with it.”

Even after everything he witnessed, Sidharth says his feelings for his father remain complicated but not bitter. “I have always considered my father a hero, even till his last days. No matter how much pain I’ve gone through, or whatever has happened in my life. He loved me a lot. I have never hated my father, never did, and I still don’t. Even when he used to beat my mother, I didn’t feel hatred. I just felt like, ‘Please don’t do this,’ but I never hated him.”

Siddharth’s father later died of cardiac arrest, his sister Jaya Bhardwaj is now married to cricketer Deepak Chahar.

Talking of prevalence of domestic abuse and how women are hesitant about reporting it, Ranjana Kumari, director, Centre for Social Research earlier told Indian Express, “Domestic violence is much more prevalent in society than the reported cases that we get. All the more women are stepping forward, women are still hesitant since societal stigma continues to weigh them down. It’s important to analyse how these cases are addressed after they are reported and if justice is guaranteed.”

DISCLAIMER: This article contains accounts of domestic violence, physical abuse, and childhood trauma. We understand that reading about such experiences can be deeply distressing. If you or someone you know is struggling with the emotional impact of past or present abuse, please know that support is available. Reaching out to a professional or a helpline can provide a safe space to process these experiences and begin the journey toward healing.

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