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.

Another podcast that began this year is Spotify original
Death, Lies & Cyanide, a 10-episode deep dive into the Jolly Amma Joseph case, where a 47-year-old Kerala woman allegedly killed six members of her family over the course of 14 years. Hosted by journalist Sashi Kumar, it investigates how the quiet, affable mother-of-two turned alleged murderer. The series aims to give listeners a deeper understanding into the psychology of the enigmatic Joseph herself. Kumar says, “There is this question of why Jolly Amma Joseph, who sings like a canary and confesses it all after arrest, should do this to begin with. The whole thing is based on a lie covering up a lie and it is a chain reaction that led to homicides. And you can’t help but think, all these confessions, all these things in the 3,000 word chargesheet — are these lies too?”