‘Death was a constant motif in his music’: Jupinderjit Singh, author of ‘Who Killed Moosewala?’

The hypermasculine, gun-brandishing rap sensation Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu aka Sidhu Moosewala catapulted Punjabi music to an unimaginable high. Not only were his songs frequently featured on the Billboard Global 200, the Canadian Hot 100, and the Billboard India Songs charts, but he had also, despite a brief singing career, achieved unrivalled and unparalleled popularity. He could have disrupted the industry more had his life not been cut short on May 29, 2022.

Moosewala was assassinated on his way to his aunt’s house. He was with Gurwinder and Gurpreet – his cousin and friend respectively. Both survived the attack. The news of his murder, the CCTV footage of the Bolero and Corolla following his Mahindra Thar SUV, and the image of the gunshot-ridden Thar after the attack all went viral. But virality panders to the sensationalist market, never to those who want to make sense of the crime. For the latter, one has to rely on someone like Jupinderjit Singh.

A crime reporter with 27 years of experience and a journalist at Chandigarh’s Tribune, Singh has written an immensely sensitive and layered account of the case in his latest, Who Killed Moosewala?: The Spiralling Story of Violence in Punjab. In this slim volume, Singh manages to unpack a...

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