Model-actor Sidharth Bhardwaj, who first shot to fame after winning MTV Splitsvilla Season 2 and later finishing as the second runner-up on Bigg Boss Season 5, has opened up about the deeply distressing childhood he endured behind closed doors. The reality-show star, who recently appeared on the game-based reality series The 50, spoke in a new interview about the violence, emotional turmoil and fear that shaped his early year, long before his rise to television fame. 

During his stint on The 50, Bhardwaj also revealed that he moved to the United States and took up odd jobs, including working as a taxi driver and a security guard in a strip club, to make ends meet. Now, in a conversation with interviewer Siddharth Kannan, he has laid bare the painful memories he had long carried within him.

Childhood shattered by violent incident

Bhardwaj recalled that his life took a drastic turn when he was nine. Quoting the moment that changed everything, he said, "When I was around 9 years old, someone threw my father from the sixth floor in Rohini, Delhi."

The attack left his father bedridden for five years, dependent on metal rods to support his body. In those years, Bhardwaj’s mother took charge of the household, waking before dawn to care for her husband, tend to her children and travel nearly 9 kilometres for a low-paying job distributing advertising pamphlets.

He remembered asking her for a small toy, a slingshot costing Rs 7, and being told they could not afford it. "That's the environment I grew up in," he said.

Mother became sole breadwinner

Despite her meagre beginnings, his mother eventually built a successful advertising agency within six years. But the shift in power dynamics, combined with his father’s past identity as a feared gangster, led to rising tensions at home.

Bhardwaj recounted, "My mom created everything, but he couldn't accept it… So he became very violent. He punched my mother and knocked out all her teeth in front of my eyes."

According to him, the violence was relentless. "We would be asleep, and my father would wear his boots and kick my mother in the stomach while she was sleeping," he recalled. The family often locked their room at night, but the attacks continued.

He added, "At school, we would pretend everything was fine… In a way, we had already died back then."

Father’s past as a boxer and mafia hitman

Sharing more about his father’s background, Bhardwaj said he was born in Delhi’s Chanderawal, a village notorious in the 1980s for being home to several gangsters.

He quoted, "My father used to be their hitman because he was a boxer, Billu Boxer. These people ran the Delhi mafia."

His mother insisted they move out of the village after Sidharth was born, hoping to escape the violent environment. "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."

Though his father physically left, Bhardwaj said he remained psychologically attached to his old world and visited his former circle daily.

No hatred despite the trauma

Even after years of abuse and fear, Bhardwaj said he never felt hatred toward his father.

"I have always considered my father a hero… Even when he used to beat my mother, I didn't feel hatred," he said, recalling a moment when, at 16, he struck his father with a dog chain in desperation.

His father later died of cardiac arrest. Bhardwaj added that despite everything, he remembers him with affection. His sister, Jaya Bhardwaj, is now married to cricketer Deepak Chahar.