BENGALURU : A young lawyer and resident of New Delhi, continuously harassed by his ex-wife for years after divorce, dies by suicide when he can’t tolerate the mental trauma any longer. He leaves several suicide notes, including a 13-page letter, detailing the torture he underwent and how his ex-wife had made his life difficult by filing false cases, beating him up, getting him thrown out of jobs, and threatening him a painful death.
In her latest documentary, India’s Sons — Tale of False Rape Case Survivors, filmmaker Deepika Narayan Bharadwaj captures heart-wrenching real-life stories of innocent men and boys who were supposedly falsely accused of rape, as the name of the film suggests. The documentary, which will be screened in the city on May 29, is co-directed by Neeraj Kumar and is produced by Shonee Kapoor.
According to Bharadwaj, she decided to make the 90-minute documentary after the number of false rape cases went up in the country. “Following the horrific Nirbhaya case, India’s rape laws became stricter and made punishments more severe. The laws were strengthened to address the menace of sexual assault that posed a threat to the lives of innocent women and girls. But it also arose a threat to the lives of innocent men and boys – that of false rape accusations,” she says.
From her research, she found that the data from trial courts in Delhi shows that acquittal rates rose from 46 per cent to 75 per cent between January and August 2013. Five years later, in 2018, Rajasthan police reported 47 per cent of the rape cases to be false during the investigation. About 45 per cent of the rape cases reported in Andhra Pradesh in 2018-19 were by the false promise of marriage. “The numbers have been going up; the common reason stated by women is false promise of marriage,” she claims.
Quoting Justice Nivedita Anil Sharma, Bharadwaj says when a complaint is filed, the woman is immediately addressed as a ‘rape survivor’. “But when men who are falsely accused of rape are acquitted, shouldn’t they be called ‘rape case survivors’? That was the basis of my film. We have constantly been talking about India’s daughters and how they need to be protected. But we have forgotten about India’s sons who have been suffering for years,” Bharadwaj argues.
Through the film, Bharadwaj hopes she’s able to share complete stories rather than one-sided tales. “Each life matters and everyone deserves justice. The motive behind the making of this film was not only to highlight the fact that false accusations of rape are an injustice to innocent men but also to women who are victims of rape in the country. Acknowledging the struggles of rape case victims does not invalidate victims of rape,” she says.
In fact, it was one of her first works ‘Martyrs of Marriage’ in 2012, a documentary on the misuse of anti-dowry law, which also led to the making of this film. Making one like this, Bharadwaj says, comes with its set of challenges.
“A case that is featured in the film is about four innocent boys who were falsely accused of rape. While three of them agreed to be a part of the film, one of them refused. He said he had spent years tolerating the punishment of a crime he didn’t commit and didn’t want to experience any more of it,” she says, adding, “The other three came ahead hoping for justice.”