Ghaziabad- The arrest of Hindutva activist Swatantra Bhardwaj has not ended the turmoil surrounding 14-year-old Dalit content creator Nishu Azad. Instead, the teenager and her family say the pressure has followed them home.
Nishu alleges that her family is now being pushed out of the rented accommodation where they have lived for barely a month. She says their landlord has given them around 20 days to vacate the property, even though the rental agreement was signed for 11 months.
More seriously, Nishu alleges that police themselves intervened.
Speaking exclusively to The Mooknayak, she said the landlord told the family that Shalimar Garden police had called and questioned why “such people” had been given the house.
According to Nishu, the alleged message was blunt: “What kind of people have you rented the house to? They are bad people. Get them to vacate the house.”
The Mooknayak could not, however, independently verify the allegations.
For Nishu, however, the question is no longer simply whether she can remain in her rented home. It is whether her family can continue living there without fear.
Nishu says she has faced online trolling and alleged rape threats because of her Ambedkarite and atheist views and her social media content.
She says she is not frightened by the threats directed at her.
“These threats and pressure do not scare me,” she told The Mooknayak.
Her concern, she said, is her family.
Nishu lives with her parents and siblings. Her father, Sanjay Kumar, is a transport businessman and her mother is a homemaker.
The family has now decided to look for another home, she said, partly because their residential location has been circulated on social media.
Nishu says unfamiliar people have been seen around the house, leaving the family increasingly concerned about its safety.
The residential dispute intensified after Nishu alleged that unidentified people threw stones and pebbles at her home, recently.
She reported the incident to the police, who visited the location and inspected the premises, according to Nishu.
But no effective action has followed, she alleges.
Residents of the housing society have strongly rejected the allegation. In interviews with local media, several residents said there had been no stone-pelting and questioned why the society was being portrayed as unsafe.
The two versions are starkly different. Nishu says stones were thrown at her home. Residents say it did not happen.
The society has CCTV cameras, making the footage potentially critical to establishing what happened that night.
Nishu says the family has not been shown what the cameras captured.
“Let them check the CCTV footage and tell us what actually happened,” she said.
Until the footage is examined and the police investigation establishes the facts, the allegation of stone-pelting remains disputed.
Nishu also alleges that even visitors to her home have become a source of suspicion.
She cited the recent visit of NSUI president Vinod Jakhar, saying residents subsequently claimed that as many as 20-25 vehicles had arrived at the property.
Nishu challenged the claim.
“Let them check the CCTV footage and count how many vehicles actually came,” she said.
Her argument is straightforward: where cameras exist, claims about who entered the society and how many vehicles arrived should be verifiable rather than driven by speculation.
Nishu traces the conflict to her social media work and her ideological beliefs.
She says she became influenced by Dr B.R. Ambedkar’s ideas when she was around 10 or 11 years old. She also says she has been influenced by Bhim Army Chief Chandrashekhar Azad and began creating social media content around three-and-a-half years ago.
Her content includes criticism of religious beliefs and an emphasis on what she describes as a scientific and atheist worldview.
Nishu alleges that this has made her unpopular among some residents of the society.
She describes the neighbourhood as having a strong Hindutva or RSS-influenced presence and believes her views are a major reason for the hostility she is facing.
That allegation, however, has not been independently established for the society as a whole.
The dispute is nevertheless revealing a deeper fault line: how much space does a teenager have to express an unpopular or anti-religious worldview before social disagreement turns into pressure to leave her home?
The fallout has not remained confined to the neighbourhood. Nishu says she and her siblings have not been able to attend school for the past three or four days. She alleges that classmates have been mocking her over the Jantar Mantar incident and making comments about the controversy surrounding her family. Yet she makes an important distinction. According to Nishu, the teachers at her school have supported her and she has not faced a serious problem from the teaching staff. The hostility, she says, has largely come from some classmates.
We had moved into this house just a month ago, yet now, because of the people in the society, we are being forced to vacate it again. We have been given only a few days' notice. Babasaheb Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, too, faced situations where he lost both his home and his dignity due to caste-based discrimination. And today, we are facing the same; my family is truly having to endure so much.- Nishu Azad
Nishu says the situation changed significantly after the controversy surrounding Bhardwaj’s podcast.
She credits the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) team with standing by the family from the beginning and says political support subsequently came from Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Azad Samaj Party president Chandrashekhar Azad.
She also says Delhi Police provided substantial support when she with Azad and the CJP convenors approached the police station.
But she draws a sharp contrast with the local police in Ghaziabad.
“The Delhi Police has been very supportive, but the Shalimar Garden police are still not taking action,” she alleged.
The allegation is particularly significant because Nishu now says the same local police allegedly contacted her landlord and urged him to have the family vacate the house.
The family’s tenancy has become another point of contention.
Nishu says the rental agreement is for 11 months and that they moved into the property only around a month ago.
However, she says the agreement contains a clause allowing the landlord to ask them to vacate after notice.
The family therefore plans to leave, she said.
But Nishu insists the decision is being driven less by the tenancy arrangement than by security concerns.
“We are looking for a safe place for the family,” she said.
The teenager says she does not want the controversy to dictate her life, but she cannot ignore the possibility that her younger siblings could be affected.
The case involving Nishu has now acquired several layers.
There are allegations of online trolling and rape threats. There is the arrest of Swatantra Bhardwaj. There is the disputed allegation of stone-pelting at the family’s home. And now there is an allegation that the family is being pressured to leave its rented accommodation.
But taken together, they illustrate the extraordinary pressure surrounding a 14-year-old who has become the public face of a rapidly escalating dispute over caste, religion, free expression and political ideology.
Nishu says she has no intention of abandoning her beliefs.
“I am not afraid,” she says.
But she also acknowledges a reality that is harder to dismiss: when a teenager’s home address becomes public, strangers begin appearing nearby and her family starts worrying about the safety of younger children, simply moving to another house can begin to look less like a choice and more like an escape.
For now, the most important unanswered questions remain factual ones: What does the CCTV footage show about the alleged stone-pelting? Did police contact the landlord and ask him to evict the family? And why has a 14-year-old’s social media activity become the centre of such intense pressure inside her residential community?
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