The Desi Crime Podcast

For years, men were disappearing from Toronto’s Gay Village. Some were immigrants. Some were refugees. Some were South Asian or Middle Eastern men living complicated, private lives in a city that was supposed to offer them freedom. They moved through bars, dating apps, friendships, and chosen families — until, one by one, they seemed to vanish. At first, there were rumours. Then there was fear. People in the community warned each other that something was wrong, that someone was targeting men who were already easy for the world to overlook. But the warnings were dismissed for far too long. This is the story of how a city’s most vulnerable men went missing in plain sight, and how the truth, when it finally came out, exposed a killer more ordinary than the men who walk beside you every day. This is the story of Bruce McArthur.

A secret affair. A blackmail threat. And a mother-daughter duo willing to do the unthinkable to keep it all hidden. In this episode of Desi Crime, we unravel the shocking case of TikTok influencer Mahek Bukhari and her mother, Ansreen Bukhari, who were convicted of orchestrating the deaths of 21-year-olds Saqib Hussain and Mohammed Hashim Ijazuddin after a relationship threatened to become public. What began as an online scandal ended in a fiery crash on a dark English highway.

Watch Brown on Zee5 TODAY!https://www.zee5.com/web-series/details/brown/0-6-4z5968730

For a village in the suburbs of Ernakulam, the morning of October 3rd, 2006 arrived with a smell of kerosene and a scene so brutal that the whole country would soon be talking about it. In the weeks that followed, a name would surface. A name that became folklore, the kind of name parents used to frighten children, the kind the newspapers printed in the heightened language usually saved for natural disasters. They called him the Ripper. The trouble is, twenty years from the crime, nobody can tell you for certain whether he actually did it. This is a story about a monster or it’s the story about how a country builds one when it needs one. This is the story of the Ripper of Kerala.

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Welcome to Chai & Chithi, a segment where we read some of the scariest, most terrifying, and most haunting stories that YOU send in to us. In this week’s episode, we’re reading:
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://www.patreon.com/thedesistudios or join our YouTube family https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnbfV0YvrxWMq3h0hmo13Jg/join
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On April 13, 2026, somewhere in Tampa, Florida, a 26 year old American man typed a question into ChatGPT. What happens if a human has put a black garbage bag and thrown in a dumpster. The chatbot told him it sounded dangerous. He typed back. How would they find out. Three days later, two Bangladeshi doctoral students at the University of South Florida — two young people who were quietly planning to spend the rest of their lives together — would disappear. This is the story of Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy, and the machine that, allegedly, was asked to help plan their deaths.

For extra episodes, early access, silly bloopers, subscribe at: https://www.patreon.com/thedesistudios

Join our YouTube family: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnbfV0YvrxWMq3h0hmo13Jg/join

For fastest updates, follow our socials at: https://www.instagram.com/desicrime/Aryaan https://www.instagram.com/aryaanmisra/Aishwarya https://www.instagram.com/aishwaryasinghs/

Order our book, Desi Crime, available now on Amazon:https://amzn.in/d/0WyttKW

To buy Desi Studios merch, visit: https://kadakmerch.com/collections/desi-studios