Two-part docu unspools Moose Wala’s murder as the consequence of gang rivalries in Punjab, and how his killing ultimately benefited the Lawrence Bishnoi gang
On May 29, 2022, in the dusty lanes of Jawaharke village in Punjab’s Mansa district, a black Mahindra Thar rolled to a halt, after it was ambushed by assailants. Thirty bullets later, the body of its owner, Sidhu Moose Wala, singer-songwriter-rapper and one of India’s most recognisable musical voices, lay slumped behind the wheel.
It wasn’t a random act of violence, but a hit: cold, calculated, coordinated, and filmed.
The BBC’s two-part documentary The Killing Call, released on YouTube on June 11 — it would have been Moose Wala’s 32nd birthday — begins with the larger-than-life image of the ‘bad boy lyricist’ who had come to entrance his listeners, ‘breaking through the barriers of the Western world,’ and then goes on to pull back the curtain on the details of his murder: who planned it, who executed it, and why it happened.
‘An act of vengeance’
Produced and reported by Ishleen Kaur, the documentary was released days before Moose Wala’s father, Balkaur Singh, filed a petition in Mansa court, seeking a stay on the documentary’s screening in Mumbai, calling it ‘premature and insensitive’, especially since the family had planned to release an EP of his unreleased songs as their official tribute.
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Moose Wala was born Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu in 1993, when memories of Operation Blue Star — the military operation in June 1984 to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his armed followers from the Golden Temple complex in Amritsar — was still fresh in the minds of people in Punjab. The documentary examines how he rose from rural Punjab to become an international hip-hop icon and how that fame collided fatally with the entrenched gang rivalries in the state.
It features audio from fugitive gangster Goldy Brar, who openly claims to have orchestrated the killing, as well as interviews with police officers, journalists, and Moose Wala’s childhood friends. Nearly three years after the murder, no convictions have been made in the case.
And prime suspect Brar remains at large. The BBC frames the film as an investigation into the murder as well as the larger web of organised crime and who benefited the most from Moose Wala’s murder. What emerges is a portrait of a fearless young man who courted risk, cramming ‘50 years of life into his last five years’ (as a friend says), and paid for it with his life.
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The Killing Call draws its sharpest edges from the unfiltered admissions of Brar, who planned Moose Wala’s murder as an act of ‘vengeance’ or ‘Gangland justice,’ as Kaur puts it. Moose Wala’s connection to Punjab’s criminal underworld were far more complex than his public image allowed. We get to know how the singer once exchanged casual “Good morning” and “Good night” messages with jailed gangster Lawrence Bishnoi in order to flatter him. But things changed somewhere down the line. Moose Wala aligned himself, musically and socially, with the rival Bambiha group.
The marked man
This did not go down well with Brar, a Bishnoi associate operating from Canada. The beginning was a kabaddi tournament in Bhago Majra village, Mohali, in February 2020. Organised by affiliates of the Bambiha gang, it became a lightning rod of tension between Moose Wala and Bishnoi’s faction. Brar tells Kaur that the singer ‘promoted our rivals’ by backing the event, an act Bishnoi regarded as a betrayal. Both police interrogations and Brar’s recorded confession link that tournament to the beginning of the rift.
Also in February 2020, Moose Wala performed at the Dirba Kabaddi Tournament in Punjab’s Sangrur district, an event that would mark a decisive break in his relationship with the Bishnoi gang. Despite reported warnings from the gang to avoid the show, believed to be backed by the Bambiha gang, Moosewala defiantly went ahead, broadcasting live on social media that he wouldn’t cancel under pressure and wasn’t afraid of threats.
Sidhu Moose Wala had a premonition he would die by bullets, and shared this with his fellow musicians.
Brar claims this performance was the turning point: Moose Wala’s presence at the event, organised by Bambiha-linked Mandeep Dhaliwal, was interpreted as a public endorsement of their rivals. Brar says the Bishnoi gang, once friendly with Moosewala, began tracking him more closely after Dirba, seeing his defiance as an act that made him a marked man.
‘It was either him or us’
When Moosewala ignored warnings to steer clear of events tied to Bishnoi’s enemies, it escalated into threats, vendettas, and ultimately, bullets. Moose Wala’s friendships with figures like Shaganpreet Singh, who played a key role in the murder of Youth Akali Dal leader Vicky Middukhera, made matters worse. Brar believed Sidhu had crossed a line, mixing with politicians, flexing his influence, allegedly shielding those accused in the killing of their associate, Middukhera, who was shot dead in Mohali on August 7, 2021. Both Bishnoi and Brar considered Middukhera to be ‘their mentor, and older brother figure.’
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“Everyone knew Sidhu’s role, the police investigating knew, even the journalists who were investigating Vicky’s case knew. Sidhu mixed with politicians and people in power. He was using his political power, his money, and his resources to help our rivals, those who killed our brother. We wanted him to face punishment for what he’d done. He should have been booked. He should have been jailed. But no-one heard our plea. So, we took it upon ourselves. When decency tails on deaf ears, it’s the gunshot that gets heard. We had no option but to kill him. It was either him or us,” Brar tells Kaur.
In his final days, Moose Wala had stopped taking calls from the very people now threatening him. But as the documentary shows, it was too late. He was already trapped by his associations with a criminal ecosystem where perception was enough to seal a death warrant.
Ishleen asks in the documentary’s closing arc: Who benefited from this killing? It was, of course, the Bishnoi gang. “Before May 2022, few knew the names Lawrence Bishnoi or Goldy Brar. After Sidhu’s death, they were infamous,” says Kaur. Their threat calls to the rich and famous in Punjab and Canada increased. And so did their extortion money.
He sang about dying young
The documentary doesn’t paint Moose Wala simply as a star caught in the crossfire. It also shows him as someone with conscience and charisma, a man who had immersed himself in Punjab’s history and its post-conflict identity.
He was a man of contradictions. He sang about AK-47s, but was a farmer at heart. During the farmers’ protests, he stood on tractors and stages, calling out the government: “Tell Modi a farmer’s son is here,” he roared. His song, dedicated to farmers, Punjab (Motherland), became an anthem, blaring from speakers and protest convoys.
Moose Wala was a great admirer of American rapper Tupac Shakur, who was gunned down in Las Vegas at the age of 25. In his song Homicide, Moose Wala wrote: ‘Tupac naal mildi aa rashi mitheya (my fate seems to be matching that of Tupac’s). He had a premonition he would die by bullets. In his final self-released single, The Last Ride, Moose Wala referenced youth cut short. He also dressed the release in Tupac’s crime scene imagery, evoking the same BMW drive by setting where Tupac fell.
“Chobbar de chehre utte noor dassda, ni ehda uthuga jawani ch janaza mithiye (Everything is revealed in the eyes of the young boy that the funeral will take place in his youth),” he sang. He openly admitted that all he wanted from his life was that “people cried” when he died. And they did. The Killing Call ends with a haunting absence: of a man who sang about dying young, and whose last song became a dirge for himself.
