The only place I ever heard of garlic powder, used in a curry, was from Pat Chapman's books.
Hello Pete...Sorry! I mean Haldi

I have also come across the use of garlic powder in "100 Best Balti Curries" by Diane Lowe and Mike Davidson. A restaurant called "Kyber Pass", in Birmingham, apparently uses 1 tbsp of it in their chicken tikka masala (CTM). I used this as a basis for my CTM here:
http://www.curry-recipes.co.uk/curry/index.php?topic=1325.0And a damned tasty CTM it produced too! (with a few significant modifications of course!)
It apparently "gives the strong garlic flavour of fresh garlic without the onion-ness of fresh garlic", according to the chef at Kyber Pass.
I use garlic powder often, and often with fresh garlic, to give a balance of garlic flavour.
I agree with what CP says; I suspect garlic powder is often used in hotter BIR curries (e.g. Madras, Vindaloo, etc), together with ginger powder. I have no direct evidence for saying this; it's just my intutition...which may be wrong of course.

And also as CP suggests, I believe the question of using garlic, in its various forms, is important enough to warrant a debate in a separate thread (this thread is about the "UCB" after all

)...anyone want to start a new thread? If so, I'd be more than happy to contribute to it.
Regards,