The Desi Crime Podcast

Desi Killers, Desi Kidnappers, Desi Criminals - a true-crime podcast hosted by @aishawarmas & @aryaanmisra | [email protected]

[The Desi Crime Podcast @DesiCrime]

Timestamps:

10:40 - "According to one account collected later by Nidheesh M K, the journalist who would spend a year reopening this case, a middle-aged man in the village was nearly beaten to death by a mob one night"
14:06 - "by his own account given to journalist Nidheesh M K, persuaded the man to come in for what was framed as an interview with the warrant on the brawl held over his head as leverage"
14:15 - "Now, Nidheesh was researching this case under a fellowship from Project 39A, a death penalty research and legal aid project"
15:40 - "years later, Thumpy would tell Nidheesh in a phone call he made shortly before disappearing into hiding"
16:54 - "she told it again to Nidheesh when he visited her in the family's small unfinished house in rural Thrissur"
18:08 - "RK Krishna Kumar sat down for a long recorded interview with Nidheesh in his own home almost two decades later"
19:19 - "He told Nidheesh that no external injuries would be visible, that proper interrogation could be done without damaging vital organs"
19:46 - "One local community leader told Nidheesh, asking not to be named. Quote, 'They had to help him walk...'"
24:07 - "There is one more thing about Krishna Kumar that Nidheesh discovered while walking around Puthenvelikkara"
25:56 - "According to Nidheesh's review of the court papers, Janardhanan was eventually acquitted in this case"
26:31 - "The judge, according to a UNI news report cited by Nidheesh, observed that there was no reliable evidence to connect the accused to the crime"
33:40 - "Now we come to the man of the hour, the maverick, the journalist Nidheesh M K, who drove out to Thrissur's Viyyur central jail"
33:54 - "Nidheesh has described in his eventual long-form report for The News Minute in March 2023 what struck him about the first meeting"
34:21 - "he spoke calmly and with what Nidheesh described, with some surprise, authority"
34:47 - "It was a discovery Nidheesh made less than a month into the investigation while sitting in the dust of a Kerala court records room"
35:43 - "According to Nidheesh, who reproduced images of the document in his published investigation, it had simply sat in the file"
36:57 - "a relative of Devaki, speaking to Nidheesh on the condition of anonymity, said that the family had known the gold was not the original"
37:43 - "The relative gave Nidheesh a number. The original gold weighed 22 grams. The gold produced in court was 18"
38:13 - "According to her own testimony in court and to her interview with Nidheesh years later, she had panicked on the stand"
42:20 - "When Nidheesh tracked Babu down, by then working as a manager at a clothing shop in a different town, Babu retracted his testimony"
43:15 - "A retired head constable named Shibu, who had been at the Puthenvelikkara station at the time, told Nidheesh a different story"
43:55 - "the medical report on Ramakrishnan, when Nidheesh read it carefully, indicated that his head injuries had been inflicted approximately 12 hours before"
45:56 - "This is what Nidheesh found in 12 months of digging. Not a story of a man who was definitively innocent"
55:24 - "In his own conversations with Nidheesh, when pressed, Janardhanan called the escapes the worst mistakes of his life"
57:11 - "She told Nidheesh more than once that she did not understand the legal system"
57:32 - "She told Nidheesh that one of the advocates working on the case had offered her a ride home from court one afternoon"
28:54 - "All I'm seeing is one journalist from NLU Delhi ripping apart a thread. / He's the ripper. / He is the ripper in the best way"
27:01 - "in language that the journalist's review of the judgment preserves verbatim"
46:01 - "Because that is not a story a journalist working alone can ever tell, but a story of a case that when you actually opened it up..."
1:02:42 - "The investigation that came closest is the one done by a single journalist working alone with a fellowship from a law school"

[The Desi Crime Podcast @DesiCrime]

The internet allows for discourse. Often, it is preceded by dehumanization. A journalist can be lauded 29 times on an episode, highlighted and praised for his impeccable work, and he can proceed to call you a ‘parasite’. Other journalists and heads of media organizations – people that have never met you – concur that you are indeed a parasite. Those that protest the dehumanization of communities are the first to brandish individuals as parasites.

These are serious allegations made against us. “Theft” and “plagiarism” are words not to be treated lightly in a writer’s universe, or in a legal one. Here’s an example of the ‘theft’ from our narration: “Now, Nidheesh was researching the case under a fellowship from Project 39A, a death-penalty research and legal aid program at NLU Delhi and is a key figure in this story, so I want you to remember him,” we told the audience in our episode. His name was mentioned 29 separate times by us, along with a photograph of him. This is, admittedly, a strange way to go about stealing someone's work. Normally thieves prefer not to repeatedly announce who they are stealing from.

[Nidheesh M K @mknid]

https://t.co/sr2BW0ZjTb

[The Desi Crime Podcast @DesiCrime]

Let's address another fascinating theory that has emerged in the discourse of our episode. Apparently, because we cited a journalist's publicly available reporting, we should share revenue from the episode with that journalist. This is genuinely exciting because it has implications far beyond Desi Studios. Entire industries may need restructuring.

By this standard, every television channel discussing a newspaper investigation owes money to the newspaper. Every author owes royalties to every historian in the bibliography. Somewhere, a Nobel Prize committee is scrambling to figure out how to divide prize money among the hundreds of researchers cited in the winning paper.

If all this is to happen, as many have suggested it should, then it raises another question. Nidheesh's own investigation was built from court records, previous public reporting, lawyers, experts and more. Did he share revenue with them? Did The NewsMinute distribute advertising revenue to every source whose information helped build the story? Of course not. Because nobody believes that is how the media works.

The currency of journalism has always been attribution, not revenue-sharing agreements with every contributor. Which is fortunate, because otherwise every published article or YouTube video would require the accounting infrastructure of a multinational corporation before reaching print.

To this journalist: we understand work is hard to come by in your field. We also understand that this is your moment. Please feel free to bask in the retweets, comments of sympathy, and likes you will receive. Unlike other folks that have talked about your work without credit (the Malayalam channels you mentioned), we praised you over and over. But you chose to call us robbers because that gives you the most chance at public sympathy. That’s alright with us.

In the acknowledgments of our book, we wrote: “To the journalists who get a bad rep in the modern age but are truly the 4th pillar of any democracy, especially ours, we are grateful to so many of you for your impeccable investigative work.” But our commitment is to Jayanandan, Keerthi, and the thousands of victims whose story never gets heard. If we have a mic, and a platform, we will tell their stories. As long as the victims of our story want to be heard, we will lend them a mic.

Stay Blessed, Stay Crazy, Stay Desi
Aryaan and Aishwarya

[Chalchitra Talks @ChalchitraT]

Crime show lover and missed this gem? 😱

@MunjalVaibhav got a killer recommendation from @AryaanMisra, co-founder of @DesiCrime — a show that might’ve flown under your radar 🎯

[The Desi Crime Podcast @DesiCrime]

Love you aunty

[Vina Leekha @vinaleekha1]

@DesiCrime hey Aishwarya and Ayaan, I’m a granny who discovered your podcasts last month. And I love them. Have binged, and binged.Aishwarya, you remind me so much of my granddaughter that I have a soft corner for you.

[The Desi Crime Podcast @DesiCrime]

thanks 🫶🏽

[Free Radical @bukowfee]

@DesiCrime Aaryan what a painful (to my ears) poem you sung in the last one. Not required. Boring, shitty and not relevant. Holy shit.

Go read Bukowski

[manan @_goatkeeper]

@bhansalichirag7 random food review 10:

best protein bar i have had, by far, and now i totally get why the ppl over at @DesiCrime rep it so hard..the coffee flavour stood out and it tasted really fresh...surely something i am having again, only slight complain is that it is a wee bit pricy

[Archit Puri @bantofu]

Just discovered the @DesiCrime podcast. Really well done show.

[Blackbox Alpha @NotYourWingmanG]

Crazy episode crazy drinks @DesiCrime

[Rashi @theyloverashi]

Just finished watching @DesiCrime 's new drunk Chai and Chitthi episode, and never have I ever felt this drunk without even sipping a drop of alcohol 😂

[The Desi Crime Podcast @DesiCrime]

@szac0re we love you 🐐

[Anshu @anshusaidthat]

@DesiCrime 🥲💗

[Sikandar @VinamreKasanaa]

My friend @AryaanMisra of @DesiCrime just summarised the KIIT issue. Listen in.
Racism is at an all time rise in the country. We’ve just isolated one of our ally nations because of one horrible boy’s stupidity. Shame.

#PrakritiLamsal #KIITUniversity

[The Desi Crime Podcast @DesiCrime]

New Show Announcement: https://t.co/0D0s4ZAZlW

[hani 💌 @baskarohani]

y'all are missing out on a gem of the podcast world if you're not listening to/watching @DesiCrime. great new episode btw!, love aishwarya's narration (though I miss aryaan yapping)

[Rishi Chhabra @rishichhabraa]

A Valentine’s Day must-watch!!
@DesiCrime @aishawarmas @AryaanMisra