The macaca crime blotter is on overdrive this month.
Long time readers may remember the story of Karishma Dhanak, 20, a UC Irvine student who was found murdered alongside her father about 3 years back. The crime was allegedly committed by her sister’s former boyfriend who wanted revenge on the parents for being responsible for the relationship ending, apparently religion was a factor.
NDTV reports that the accused, 25-year-old Indian national Iftekhar Murtaza, is currently on trial in Orange county, California.
Prosecutors in California’s Orange County had last week said they will …

Desi ishtyle [link] (tip maisnon via email)
No thanks to Anurag Mathur’s The Inscrutable Americans, it has been every desi guy’s dream to join the mile high club. Murali Nookella achieved it in typical desi ishtyle and probably landed himself on the FBI no-fly list.
Say you’re a 34 year old horny male computer programmer from the subcontinent stuck on a boring cross country flight. What do you do for fun? If your name is Murali Nookella, the answer would be: pull out the male organ and start pleasuring one’s self.
A Delaware …

…. desi ishtyle. Sujatha (Sue) Sachdeva, Koss’s former vice president of finance and secretary, had a penchant for clothing, jewelery and to put it in simpler terms “bling”. However, there is a reason for the use of the word “former vice president”, she reportedly pursued her love for “da bling” with her employer’s money. [MW]
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal had reported that the U.S. attorney in Milwaukee had filed a criminal complaint charging Sachdeva with embezzling company funds.
The complaint charged that she spent some $4.5 million to buy furs, …

Two articles I read this morning stayed with me the entire day.
The first was this uplifting ( sarcasm) headline “India at bottom in man-woman equality index: World Economic Forum” in the Times of India. India ranked a shameful 114 out of 134 developing countries , indexed in terms of man-woman equality. The gender gap is increasing – not the least because of an estimated 25 Million ” missing women ” in India.Missing because of female foeticide or abortion. On the list , India ranks behind Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri …

Link via Chicago Tribune
Chicago based Samir Zia Chowan [sic](Chowhan), an immigration attorney, lists an ad for a secretary in the adult section of Craigslist, and requests ‘physical measurements’ along with a photo, strangely enough he gets a response and hat gets him bold enough to inform the job aspirant that fulfilling his ‘adult entertainment’ fantasies are also part of the job, including sexual interactions with him and his partner, sometimes together, sometimes separate.
And such it goes, the text of the e-mail response, other counts of legal offenses can be seen …

Patrick Nayyar, an immigrant from the des, was arrested by the FBI for trying to aid, of all organizations, (in)famous international terror group Hezbollah. [Rediff]
According to the indictment filed on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court and the criminal complaint unsealed on September 24, between July 2009 and September 2009, Nayyar along with his accomplice Conrad Stanisclaus Mulholland agreed to provide weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Hezbollah.
Among other equipment, Nayyar sold the FBI informant a handgun, a box of ammunition and a pick-up truck and further agreed to provide them with …

Anand Deva, a Sydney-based doctor, is in the middle of a major racial controversy after performing a blackface spoof of the Jackson Five on an Australian show ‘Hey Hey its Saturday’. [TOI]
This story seems to have garnered worldwide attention as Harry Connick Jr was one of the judges on the show and ended up protesting the performance and rating it a zero. The offender, Dr. Deva expressed surprise over the controversy and made a rather weak argument trying to justify it.
“I am an Indian, and five of the six of …

This is a post that I would rather not have written. It is one of those that is deeply uncomfortable and yet it must be written. Especially after the minor meltdown I had last week. Diepriye Kuku, an African American Phd Student at the Delhi School ofEconomics gives a searing and first hand account of the racism he faces daily in India in a piece entitled wincingly enough ” India is Racist, And Happy about it ” published in Outlook India. (link

An Indian origin couple has been sentenced in Australia on manslaughter charges in connection with the death of their baby girl.
Thomas Sam, 42, a college lecturer in homoeopathy and his wife Manju, 37, of Sydney were found guilty of the most serious case of manslaughter by criminal negligence leading to the death of their nine-month-old daughter Gloria in May 2002.(link)
The father a practicing homeopath chose to treat his daughter with homeopathic medicines for a simple case of eczema, that deteriorated into a serious skin disorder that led to the child’s …

CNN International has this curious story on the prevalent fairness cream craze in India. [CNN]
Curious because CNN treats an age old social issue like it’s a new fad. Basically the article is a segue into comments by Indian Member of Parliament, Brinda Karat, who labeled the concept behind such creams “racist”.
“Basically if you need a job you have to have white skin. If you want a good partner, a companion you need white skin and you always seem to get it once you’ve used the fairness cream. Basically I …

Prof. Ravi Shankar is a published poet, and a faculty member at the Central Connecticut State University. On July 10th this year, he was arrested on false charges, and detained for more than 30 hrs in a NY detention facility while being hurled with racial epithets. His record only had an unpaid speeding ticket, but he was being arrested as he ‘fit’ the description of a 140 pound caucasian male, while being a 200 pound, East Indian male.
After being produced before a magistrate after 30 hrs of detention and being …

In case you have been living under the proverbial rock, Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), was detained at an U.S. airport. [CNN-IBN]
Contrary to popular reports, SRK was not held hostage by a fan masquerading as airport security who was smitten by his six-pack.
The actor said he was told he had a “common name” and hence the questioning was required.
“It was in Newark where I was detained for questioning. It was because they said my name was common to some name that popped up on the computer. They were asking …

After INS and TSA, it’s burglars now. Apparently, Hindu homes in Fairfax county of Virginia are being targeted by burglars. [MyFoxDC]
Homes with Ganesh symbols hit hardimg: via MyFoxDC
The Hindu god, Ganesh, is considered the remover of obstacles. For burglars in Virginia targeting homes with Hindu symbols, Ganesh, seems to be doing exactly that, removing any obstacles in their path.
Since January of this year, someone has been targeting homes in Fairfax County based on their ethnic and religious affiliations.
Investigators now believe they can link 16 crimes in which the burglar or …

Anirudh Lakhan Sukhu, 42, pleaded guilty to among other things, armed bank robbery, shooting and injuring a bank employee during the robbery and leading the police on a car chase across four counties. [TOI]
Sukhu is accused of teaming up with Sharman Said and Omar Burnett to rob a Bank of America branch in Clarksville, Maryland. During the robbery Sukhu is alleged to have shot a bank employee in the hand with a shotgun and then using his pick-up truck as the escape vehicle. During the ensuing police chase, spanning four …

Tired of insurgency, terrorism and border intrusions, the Indian Army decided to think out of the box. They went out and procured nearly two dozen “silent reconnaissance vehicles for missions beyond enemy lines” worth Rs. 1 crore (approx $210,000). And just to be extra conspicuous they disguised these “silent reconnaissance vehicles” as ………. golf carts. [TimesOnline UK] (tip Sandeep via email)
The scandal emerged in a scathing audit of the military’s recent spending by India’s civil servants after army chiefs were given powers over their expanding budgets to combat terrorism.
Nothing …

Gurjeet Singh of Merriville, Indiana was shot dead while working at his uncle’s gas station. [Post Tribune]
Gurjeet, originally from India, in the US via Canada was brutally shot and killed by 4 armed assailants. The story gets much worse when security tapes show costumers leaving the gas station who did not even call in to report the robbery or the killing.

Here’s a true story of how racial stereotyping can cause pain, even when done with the best of intentions. [LATimes]
In 1992, Kalpesh Vardhan, a UCLA student and the son of Indian immigrants, was found murdered in a parking garage in downtown L.A.
On the morning of Aug. 19, 1992, Kalpesh Vardhan pulled his Toyota Corolla into a tall parking structure on Olive and 8th streets in downtown L.A.
More than seven hours later, a parking lot security guard noticed a body sprawled behind parked vehicles. It looked at first like a …

An Indian student at the University of Southern Mississippi was seriously injured in a robbery at the gas station he was working at. The Indian media seems to be falling over themselves to sensationalize this incident and each news source has conflicting reports on the same story.

An attack on Indian students in Australia  – the latest in a string of such incidents- has left a 25 year old engineering student from Andhra Pradesh in critical condition in a Melbourne hospital.
Shravan Kumar, the 25-year-old student, is critical, said one of his close friends who had a narrow escape during that attack.
“Doctors are still unsure if Kumar will survive and if he does, he will lose his vision or memory”, Kumar’s friend, Srinivas Gandhi, said.(link)
The group of Indian students was attacked by a group of teenagers. In the …

Earlier we blogged about the fatal shooting of a Sikh preacher in Vienna, Austria and before that about Walmart opening it’s first store in India. Ironically, we get to talk about both in this story in a cause-effect situation. [WSJ]
India deployed paramilitary troops to the northern state of Punjab Monday to quell riots in several cities sparked by the fatal shooting of a preacher at a Sikh temple in Vienna Sunday.
The violence delayed the scheduled opening Tuesday of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s first Indian store, in Amritsar.
BBC has on the root …