The Indian river shad, Gudusia chapra (Hamilton-Buchanan, 1822), is a freshwater clupeid widely distributed in the river systems of India and Bangladesh affluent to the Bay of Bengal; principally the Ganges and Brahmaputra systems and the River Mahanadi in Orissa (Whitehead 1985).
It has additionally been reported in Nepal and Pakistan (Shrestha 1994, Menon 1999).
The species is pelagic and potamodromous (Riede 2004), and occurs in lakes, ponds, ditches and inundated fields (Rahman 1989).