Desi Crime Podcast

Welcome to Chai and Chithi, a segment where we take fan stories mailed in to us, as well as share some of our more personal ghastly experiences. Mail in your spooky, crime or desi stories to desicrime@thebranchmedia.org.

Over the last decade, India has been home to a slew of unexpected, scandalous and devastating suicides with sinister back stories. These suicides, those of Jiya Khan, Pratyusha Banjerjee, Sushant Singh Rajput, Tunisha Sharma and more, weren’t just stories of people who gave up on their lives. They were stories of crime, corruption, power, politics and our country’s criminal underbelly that led the...

Welcome to Chai and Chithi, a segment where we take fan stories mailed in to us, as well as share some of our more personal ghastly experiences. Mail in your spooky, crime or desi stories to desicrime@lostdebate.com

The cases you usually hear on true crime podcasts, the ones we usually cover, have a clear perpetrator and a clear victim. One person is in the wrong, the obvious suspect, the “villain” in the case. One person is innocent, the one who has been wronged and whose justice we long for. But then come cases that flip on their head our conception of wrong or right, good or evil. Today’s story is of one s...

1 bath tub, 3 dead bodies. A marriage in turmoil. A feverish lover. The house on 20 Grass Tree Close, Bridgeman Downs, Queensland Australia holds all the answers. On 22 April 2003, the police are summoned to decrypt this mystery. Clues lay scattered around the residence. But less physical evidence awaits them. The people evidence comes first. A debaucherous father, a complicit mother, and the vend...

Home. A word that denotes haven, tranquility and family, but it often transforms into a hell for many. Houses are fascinating, take the cement structure of a home that hides away tales and tragedies, musings and maladies, all while standing upright and resolute. From the outside, a house can cast a certain image and connotations. A tin-roofed hut in a slum for example connotes suffering, ailment,...

Welcome to Chai and Chithi, a segment where we take fan stories mailed in to us, as well as share some of our more personal ghastly experiences. Mail in your spooky, crime or desi stories to desicrime@lostdebate.com

Usually, when we cover cases on this podcast, we talk of the stories of a singular victim. A woman raped, a man murdered, a child kidnapped. And that one victim’s story is enough to enrage us; to make us feel sorrow and anger. But what happens when crime organizes itself across a whole city, engulfing more than 500 victims, destroying lives and scarring generations? This is the story of one such c...

“She said that she wanted a break from the relationship. I asked her if I should at least hope that she will come back. She said no because she wanted to stay single for some time and that might change things for her. I could not accept that.” Parse through any teenage highschooler’s diary, and words like these are all too easy to find. Breaks vs break ups, situationships vs relationships, boyfrie...

Welcome to Chai and Chithi, a segment where we take fan stories mailed in to us, as well as share some of our more personal ghastly experiences. Mail in your spooky, crime or desi stories to desicrime@lostdebate.com

Love triangles…a concept in existence for as long as love itself. But love triangles, unlike love, are controversial. They’re viewed as scandalous, calculated, and deceptive. Perhaps that is because we never hear of happy, successful love triangles. We hear of ones where jealousy, competition, ego and possessiveness take over, only to end in a tale of crime and disaster. This is the story of one s...

Welcome to Chai and Chithi, a segment where we take fan stories mailed in to us, as well as share some of our more personal ghastly experiences. Mail in your spooky, crime or desi stories to desicrime@lostdebate.com

Imagine living in a beautiful, peaceful city in India. Life is going well. You have friends, a city you call home, you go to the movies on the weekends, maybe a family lunch date every now and then. Until, one day, you find the movie halls empty, people in their houses before sundown, terror in the eyes of every passerby, and fear in the hearts of thousands furious to lock their doors and windows...

“Don’t take candies from strangers.” How simple a teaching; how elegant. But how difficult for a child to resist a sugary delight; an alpenlibe or melody offered to you for free that to before dinner. Which 6 year old could say no? Had this lesson not been inscribed in our head, we too could’ve fallen for this scheme. If you now think how stupid some kids might be to fall prey to this modus operan...

Welcome to Chai and Chithi, a segment where we take fan stories mailed in to us, as well as share some of our more personal ghastly experiences. Mail in your spooky, crime or desi stories to desicrime@lostdebate.com

In last week’s episode, we covered the case of Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee, a young couple madly in love until Hae disappears and Adnan is put under the scanner for her disappearance and subsequent murder. But I had left you with a lot of unanswered questions. Is Adnan guilty or not? For a lot of unsettling answers and even more unsettling questions, welcome back for Part 2 of the Murder of Hae Min...

You know that feeling of being young and experiencing your first love? Heightened emotions, the constant need to see them yet feeling your heart flutter when you do, that inability to go to sleep or eat, the hiding from your parents, the first touching of your hands, the first kiss, you get the picture. I know a lot of you listening will relate. There are few experiences as universal as your first...

One cardiovascular aberration after another. Stroke after stroke. Heart attacks galore in the Thomas household. 1 anomaly is understandable. But 4, that’s a bit much. Especially when the patients are in their 40s and 50s. And then appears out of thin air, a will, that allegedly of Tom Thomas. Almost as if it was conjured by someone who would benefit from it. Rojo Thomas believed that that ‘someone...

What’s in a name? Astrologers would argue 2 syllables might entail your entire destiny, such is the power of a name. But what if your life is the exact opposite of what your name suggests. Our protagonist today bears such a name. Her name is Jolly. Jolly Joseph. One of her neighbors went on record to say “Jolly seemed like the perfect woman to us.” If you didn’t know any more about this, you’d ass...

Welcome to Chai and Chithi, a segment where we take fan stories mailed in to us, as well as share some of our more personal ghastly experiences. Mail in your spooky, crime or desi stories to desicrime@lostdebate.com

Did you know woman is raped every 16 minutes in India? That adds up to 90 rapes a day, 630 rapes in a week and 2,700 rapes in a month. These are the official government figures from the year 2019. But most of these rapes never make it to the front page of your newspapers or the screens of your TV; they get lost among thousand other news pieces. But occasionally comes across a case that shocks a co...

Every film industry seems to have a dark underbelly. It seems to have countless unexplained murders, mysterious disappearances and ties to high profile criminal activity. Bollywood is the same way. From Sri Devi to Jia Khan, from Pratyusha Banerjee to Raj Kiran, crime seems to seep through our industry, leaving behind death and devastation. This is the story of one such crime that shook Bollywood,...

Latifa was onboard a 100 ft yacht Nostromo. The ship had set sail from Muscat in Oman on February 24, 2018. The objective was to transport princess Latifa and her friend Tina to the shores of Goa, a coastal town in India. But although the seafaring voyage was meant to last a few weeks, Latifa’s journey had started long before; in fact decades before. This was merely the final leg of a lifelong plo...

Welcome to Chai and Chithi, a segment where we take fan stories mailed in to us, as well as share some of our more personal ghastly experiences. Mail in your spooky, crime or desi stories to desicrime@lostdebate.com

This is the story of Dubai’s missing royal; this is the story of Princess Latifa. The best way to break a spell of awkward silence with your friends, is to ask this simple question: what would you give up for a billion dollars? That’s billion with a ‘b’. And this question takes many forms: would you give up your arms, or your legs, or vision or your relationship, and the toughest of them all, woul...