The Desi Crime Podcast

This is truth behind Darshan Thoogudeepa scandal, a hero who turned into a real life villain. On June 9th 2024, the Kannada film industry changed forever. What started as a simple investigation left the entire state completely turned on their head. This is a story of what happens when camera stops recording. This is the story of Renuka Swamy. Lights. Camera. Murder. For extra episodes, early acces...

It was 27th April 2016. Tej was supposed to celebrate his father’s 60th birthday. The 21 year old college graduate left the house at 10 am in his Volkswagen Golf hatchback. He never returned for his father’s party. Tej went missing. His car was never found. The is the story of the Chitnis family, that was left devastated when their son vanished in thin air. Chapters 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction 03:...

Women are beautiful, women are strong. Women can be each other’s biggest champion. But women can also be each other’s harshest critics; jealous and vindictive. From the mother-in-law versus bahu trope, to the trope of 2 pretty girls who can never be friends, female equations are complex, marred with the sexism society has taught us. This is the universe of every young girl’s childhood and it was t...

To listen to the full episode, head on over to our new podcast, The Bhootbusters Podcast, to get your weekly dose of Chai & Chithi: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6DA1s9Nj9bdKtVOlYhsc75?si=hUtOQFAaSnizc1wEE7JJ3A Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-bhootbusters-podcast/id1728625464 Amazon: https://music.amazon.in/podcasts/564ff27d-d49f-443b-9fa1-318fab5630aa/the-bhootbus...

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,...

Titu Singh was last interviewed by BBC in 1989. After 35 years, this is his first full length interview. To know his full story, watch our Desi Crime episode on his case: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3oL8DpFJKd4uuJHz2Qd9aG?si=uBU1JZ1KTsyQkFyroH2j9w If you are a non-hind viewer, you can access the full translation and script here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wHlDT0Gc8NufLFWoUYGfohfBjEir...

Titu Toran Singh was born in a village near Agra on December 12th, 1983. At age 2, his first words were: I am not from here. He insisted he was actually a man named Suresh, who was murdered in his past life. Over the years, he began making outlandish claims like owning a radio shop in Agra and having a wife named Uma. Finally in 1986 his parents put his claims to the test by visiting Agra where he...

Imagine you live in Perfect World. I don’t mean 'a' perfect world. I mean Perfect World, the video game. Slowly, the more you play the game, the more its adventurous valleys and roles take you into an alternate world, and the easier it becomes for you to forget the very real, imperfect world around you. This scenario, as dystopian as it may sound, was the very real state of mind of a young...

Mountains have a rapport for mysteries and hauntings. It’s as if all the world’s eeriness finds refuge in these hill stations. Folk tales of spirits and serial killers run amok. But there is one hill station in India in particular which is infamous for mishaps and mysteries. Every year, there is some story about a haunting, kidnapping and even murder taking place here. This is the story of a small...

[RECAST] Beginning next week, we will be releasing the new slate of Desi Crime episodes. We spent the last month researching and writing new scripts, hence been uploading video versions of older episodes. Can't wait for y'all to watch some of the upcoming bangers. Stay crazy, stay desi! When we cover these cases, the ones that hit the hardest are the ones where we can clearly see there was...

[RECAST EPISODE] The case that we have for you today is as much about the crime as it is about what happened following the crime. It is about death as much as it is about life. It is about morality and ethics and the society we seek to create as much as it is about punishment and sentences and justice. A case that will come to be discussed for generations now in every Indian class on the law. Thi...

What happens when skeptics and believers go ghost hunting? Find out in this special episode where we investigated the mysterious mountains of Matheran. Checkout the amazing PAIRS team here: https://www.youtube.com/@ghostencountersindia To send us your scary stories to read, write to us at staydesi [at] thedesistudios [dot] com.  For extra episodes, early access, silly bloopers, subscribe at: https...

[RECAST EPISODE] This is a bonus episode with video. 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 and possessiveness take over, only to end in a tale of disaster....

In part 1 of the story of Rajneeshpuram, you heard the story of Bhagwan Rajneesh’s life and his move to the US to a sleepy little town outside of Oregon. You heard the story of his unprecedented town takeover and the all out culture war he now found himself in the middle of. By the year 1983, the residents of Rajneeshpuram and Antelope were armed against each other and more dangerous than ever bef...

Imagine you’re living in a small middle town in the state of Oregon in 1981. Living in a ranching town with just about 50 people, you were most probably white. Life was quiet and life was simple but life was good for you there. Until one day, something seemed different. Cars and people, including Rolls Royces show up at your small sleepy town. And the people seem different— dressed in reddish oran...

Live in Mumbai on 21st April. Get your tickets here: https://zoma.to/live-event/33059 Register for Meet and Greet if you have tickets: https://mg.socialnationnow.com/desicrime (LIMITED SPOTS) Meeting the desi fam is gonna BE CRAZY and DESI (can't guarantee safe hehe).

Live in Mumbai on 21st April. Get your tickets here: https://zoma.to/live-event/33059 If you have a ticket and want to meet us, limited spots are open. Register here: https://mg.socialnationnow.com/desicrime [RECAST] On May 18th, an email was sent out to the faculty of Shiv Nadar University at 1:20 pm, which had a link to a confession video. This email was sent to 11 people on the campus. The reci...

On the midnight of 23rd November 1993, a family’s massacre jolted Shubham Apartments in the Dum Dum region of Kolkata. When the cops arrived the scene of crime, they realized there was one survivor, 16 year old Sajal Barui. Soon, that notion changed. According to India’s Juvenile Justice Act, a person under the age of 18 is viewed as a minor, and is tried as such when they commit a crime. But ther...

Sandese Aate Hain is a beautiful, old bollywood song. This song is from the movie Border, which hit theaters across the country in June of 1997. That June of 1997, Border was also playing inside one of Delhi’s most famous cinema halls– The Uphaar Grand. By the time the song played and got over though, 59 people had died in the cinema. This is the story of one of India’s most infamous fires. This i...

Sometimes, when Indians move to foreign countries, they migrate with dreams in their heart, stepping away from everything they’ve ever known only to be able to live a better life. This is exactly what Lovely and Mathew Varugese thought they were doing when they moved from India to the United States in 1990. But 2 decades later, every dream they ever came with was going to come crashing down the ni...

Kirat Assi was a young 30 year old  living in a world where it was becoming more and more common to find love, companionship, and connection online but also a world where deception, scam, and abuse behind a screen ran rampant. This is the story of a single text received in 2010 that changed Kirat’s life and a decade long romance that never actually existed in reality. This is the story of Kirat As...

To listen to the full episode, head on over to our new podcast, The Bhootbusters Podcast, to get your weekly dose of Chai & Chithi: Spotify : https://open.spotify.com/episode/3TlBzoTNUOSsd0HEE8FJYQ?si=10a5042ab0fd4de8 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chai-chithi-17-the-desi-horror-podcast/id1728625464?i=1000648565087 Amazon: https://music.amazon.in/podcasts/564ff27d-d49f-443b-9fa1-318f...

With 33 locations in India and 72 across the world, this Saravana Bhawan has set the benchmark for India’s culinary offerings. But hidden inside Sarvanna Bhawan’s dosa isn’t just a delicious potato mix, but a mysterious ingredient that took years to unfurl. An ingredient that had captured the state of Tamil Nadu, jolting its capital city of Chennai to a halt. That secret ingredient was murder. Thi...

[RECAST EPISODE] This episode was uploaded last year, but in light of the recent documentary, we are releasing it as an extra episode that sheds light on the aspects of the case that the documentary did not.

Justice delayed is justice denied. This is a phrase embedded within the very being of every judicial system in the world. Or, at least it should be. Yet the essence of this phrase is sometimes hard to live by. Sometimes comes before us a case so shocking yet so convoluted that not years but decades pass by without a shred of justice. Such is the case of a 21 year old nun from Kerala. A woman whose...