True desi crime podcasts - what people are tuning into

Gurcharan Singh was confused, very very confused. Every morning his neighbours’ reliable old grocery shop would open at 6am in the morning… But today the milkman driver was outside and honking over and over again and no one answered,” says the voice of Sneha, co-host of the true-crime podcast Khooni. She goes on to explain that the shop belonged to the Chundawat family, who lived in Burari, the kind of tightly knit neighbourhood where you couldn’t help but know each other’s schedules. The Chundawats were well-liked and so it came as a shock to Gurcharan Singh when peeking into their house he saw all 11 members of the family hanging. A deep dive into this real-life incident is part of Khooni, a podcast launched by corporate lawyers Sneha and Aditi during the pandemic. Every episode deals with a different cold case such as the Sheena Bora and Jessica Lal murders.

True crime has become an addictive genre in the US with podcasts such as Serial, Criminal and My Favourite Murder not just catering to the morbidly inclined but also raising important questions about the criminal justice system. India too is seeing a new interest in whodunit narratives with some podcasts launching long-form investigations into a particular criminal case and others, like Khooni, picking up a new case to delve into every episode. Of course, we have always had TV shows offering us amateurish re-enactments that proved even shadows can overact, but these podcasts require more of an attention span and rely on the thrill that this really happened, thus revealing the darkness inherent in our society. “In the lockdown, people were not just consuming more podcasts but also creating them,” says Aditi.