New Delhi: For a year and a half, Shivani Chauhan had kept her two worlds separate. Through the day, she was the right-hand aide to AAP leader and former Delhi Chief Minister Atishi. Away from politics, she was Sia, a biker who rode through Delhi and Gurugram roads with a black mask.
The hit-and-run on Gurugram’s Golf Course Road changed that. Her two worlds collided. That’s when Atishi called her to ask about her health. Her first question was: “Why didn’t I know that you are a biker?”
“This was something very personal to me. Even Atishi ji was shocked to know how come she didn’t know that I was a bike rider,” Chauhan told ThePrint. “I never wanted to reveal my identity, but I thought if I didn’t, it would weaken my case.”
Even her father did not know she had bought a sports bike last October. On Instagram, her two identities are visible through her two accounts. One, under her real name, has a photograph of her with Atishi. The other has her sitting on a bike with her face concealed from neck to nose.
On her birthday last year, Chauhan asked her father for money. She wanted to buy a gift for herself. Her father was in Goa when she bought the bike. When he returned, he was surprised to see a sports bike parked in the courtyard. It did not occur to him that the bike belonged to his daughter.
“I thought that the bike belonged to one of the families living on the upper floors,” Roshan Chauhan, Shivani’s father, said.
The bike was blocking the parking, so Chauhan’s father asked one of the families in the building to move it somewhere else. That’s when he got to know that it belonged to her daughter. For Chauhan, her family’s reaction to her sports bike was much like that of any conventional family.
“They said, ‘ladkiya bike nahi chalati’ and that too a sports bike,” Shivani laughed. But witnessing her passion, they eventually came around.
In October, Chauhan’s bike would have completed one year. Just a fortnight before the crash, she had it accessorised with new pads and winglets. But the new accessories didn’t last long. The bike was damaged in the hit-and-run.
A politician before a biker
At her home in the upscale Kalkaji neighbourhood, Chauhan has become a celebrity of sorts. AAP volunteers have been streaming in with their smartphones, eager to click selfies with her. They affectionately call her “Atishi Junior.”
“Ma’am, please smile,” said one.
“Ma’am, please act as if we are talking. It will look like a candid photo,” another suggested.
Once the photos were taken, the volunteers huddled around the phones, discussing which hashtags to use before posting them on social media. One such volunteer broke into a slogan before clicking a photo, “Humara neta kaisa ho, Shivani Chauhan jaisa ho.”
Chauhan was a politician before she became a biker.
Her father, Roshan Chauhan, who was associated with the AAP, recalled the first time Atishi took an interest in his daughter six years ago. Before joining the AAP, he was with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for 15 years.
Atishi had come to Chauhan’s house for lunch. Back then, Shivani was in the final year of her design course.
“My daughter served coffee to Atishi, and that led to a conversation between the two. Within half an hour, Atishi told me that my daughter should join politics,” Roshan Chauhan recalled, with a wide smile. “Atishi madam said that my daughter has the way of things. Now, Atishi and my daughter have become very good friends.”
From that moment, Shivani Chauhan went on to lead the AAP’s youth wing in Kalkaji. In 2022, she contested the Delhi civic elections as an AAP candidate. Her election affidavit at the time showed assets worth more than Rs 45 lakh.
She said she draws much of her inspiration from Atishi. “I guess my strength comes from Atishi ma’am. She has such a bold personality that I think I have somehow become like her,” she said.
Flexing gym muscles
Since Kalyan Bainsla was identified as an accused who hit Chauhan’s bike, social media has been flooded with his gym photos. The photos show Bainsla posing and flexing his muscles.
Chauhan’s father, Roshan, who was the ex-chairman of the Delhi bodybuilding association, said he laughed looking at the photos. “We come from a family of wrestlers. My father and younger brother represented India in wrestling,” he said.
And that is not all. Roshan Chauhan added that he owns 15 gyms under the name “Chauhan Body Temple” across Delhi.
“Shivani has 18 brothers, including cousins, who are bodybuilders. So, we are not threatened by anyone showing us that they go to the gym or by statements made by his gym friends,” Roshan Chauhan said.
At the Chauhans’ home, conversations about Kalyan Bainsla are hard to avoid. Since the incident, the biker’s father has been closely following the social media activity around the case. He watches the videos posted by Bainsla’s family and friends and comments on whatever they say.
After Bainsla was arrested, some of his gym friends spoke to the media in his defence. In one video that went viral, a gym acquaintance said the collision was not intentional.
“He was asking her to move to the side and, in order to save another vehicle, he unintentionally rammed into her,” the man, wearing a neon T-shirt and glasses, said.
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‘God, you saved me’
Chauhan was recording her ride to Bikers Barn Cafe in Gurugram when a white Maruti Suzuki Ciaz that was following her rammed into her on Golf Course Road. The collision was so forceful that she was thrown onto the road, while her Aprilia RS 457 sports bike was dragged several metres ahead.
It was only after her friends took her to the hospital that she remembered her camera was still recording and realised it may have captured the incident. The same video was later uploaded on her Instagram account. It went viral, drawing reactions from across the country. The video amassed more than 5 million views within 24 hours.
“When I saw that video, my first reaction was, ‘God, you have really saved me.’ The shock of the incident was so strong that I had forgotten about the camera,” said Chauhan, who is now recovering at her home in Kalkaji.
The incident has made Chauhan revisit earlier encounters with sexual harassment on the road. She recalled one ride to Murthal when two men on a Splendor began chasing her and passing lewd comments at her.
Her instinct then was the same as it was on Golf Course Road: accelerate and move ahead before the men could block her way.
“My instinct was the same this time as well: to speed up a bit, move ahead so that they don’t park their vehicle in front of my bike, leaving me nowhere to go,” she said. “But this time, it didn’t work in her favour.”
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
The kind of media attention and social media brouhaha a very minor incident kicked off – I knew right away some powerful elements are involved in this.