Vikas Walkar (left), father of Shraddha Walkar, who was brutally murdered, allegedly by her live-in partner, in 2022.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
I spoke to Vikas Walkar for the first time when every journalist wanted an exclusive interview with him. Walkar was the father of Shraddha Walkar, who had been brutally murdered, allegedly by her live-in partner, in 2022. Her body had been chopped and stuffed into bags, which were stored in a refrigerator in their apartment in Delhi. The case had sent shock waves across the country.
Walkar told me that news anchors had been hounding him. Some had even offered to fly him to Delhi and arrange for his accommodation at a posh hotel. But he was not comfortable in front of the camera, he told me.
This was a month after Shraddha’s body parts were found. I travelled to Vasai, where he lived, on the outskirts of Mumbai. He sat on a sofa, wondering if he wanted to speak on camera. It took me nearly an hour to convince him to agree to an interview. His hesitation was natural. He was shocked and upset. He did not want me to ask questions regarding certain sensitive subjects or anything that would upset him. I assured him that I would be careful while doing the interview and not ask him difficult questions. I told him that I could only imagine what he must be going through as a father.
Shraddha and her live-in partner belonged to different religions. Walkar had met the then Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra along with a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party and had demanded action in inter-faith marriages. The State government had announced that it would monitor inter-faith marriages and this had given him a sense of vindication.
There are many moral dilemmas that journalists face while doing such stories. We have to be sensitive to all the parties involved and be open to interacting with them to understand their version. We have to be mindful of the fact that a police investigation is still under way. We have to keep our ears to the ground and not get affected by all the speculation and gossip in the air about the people in the story. We have to be sensitive, yet indifferent.
Especially in cases such as this, it was important not to be judgmental. As a parent, I remember being upset that Shraddha had chosen to bear the abuse instead of opening up to her family and coming back home. Yet, when I spoke with Walkar, I had to accept and understand the fact that he was a man with his own set of ideas; that an interfaith marriage was a strict no-no for him; and that he was not close to his daughter and had not even known when she had moved cities. Walkar said that he had been waiting for his daughter to tell him that all was not well with her. “I would have brought her home had she told me what she was going through,” he told me.
He said he had also felt wronged by the system. He told me that the police should have been serious when he went to register a complaint about his daughter. “They asked me why I could not control my own daughter and told me that I should search for her by myself,” he said.
Earlier this week, news trickled in that Walkar had passed away. I once again thought of all the ‘ifs’ that had earlier crossed my mind. Would Shraddha be alive had her father supported her? Would Shraddha be alive had the police looked into Walkar’s complaint seriously? Would she be alive had the man’s family done something when Shraddha had opened up to his mother? But these are hypothetical questions. The fact is Walkar could not perform his daughter’s last rites. He possibly died a broken man, never having got justice.
Published – February 14, 2025 01:49 am IST