‘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 lot more about Punjab than Moosewala alone. From the distinct political situation of the state and the casteism that goes unreported, to drug addiction and the growing networks of criminal gangs, Singh underlines how the state’s instruments’ wilful ignorance and lackadaisical attitude lead to such crimes.

While it’s a crime report, the book partly reads like fiction. Additionally, not only does it document the grief of the young man’s parents sensitively, but it also establishes the connection between Moosewala’s farmer identity and farmers’ protest, alongside contextualising for a layperson how narcoterrorism has made Punjab its permanent home. There’s something about the way the narrative is constructed, for it has the same Punjabi flavour, is as powerful, and has thumping beats like the popular music icon whose story it tells.

In a conversation with Scroll, Singh told me that he used to listen to Moosewala’s songs in the gym. He never met him. “It was only the day after the murder that I visited the crime scene to report it. Previously, I had only reported the two FIRs against him: One for his song 295, and the other one because of the AK-47 in 2020,” he said. The book, however, “is not a biography. I haven’t tried to dissect the individuals involved; instead, I’ve tried to portray them as they are, without any colour or agenda,” said Singh. “I believe no one is a born criminal, I’ve tried to humanise everyone in the narrative.”

Punjab and Moosewala

The book’s first chapter borrows its title from Moosewala’s last single, released right before his assassination, The Last Ride, which is based on the rapper’s idol, Tupac Shakur, who was also murdered at an early age. Singh tells me that with it he “wanted to take the reader inside his Thar”. But in the next set of chapters, he introduces other characters because “it would have been an injustice to not include what the singer’s classmates and teachers had to say about him. The people, however, were not forthcoming because they neither wanted the police to pay them a visit, nor to put someone else in trouble by mentioning their names. Because everyone was a suspect in this case, it was difficult to extract information.”

To understand Punjab now and for the next 50 years, the “last decade – from 2012 through 2022 – is very crucial,” said Singh. “In every piece of research into this decade, Moosewala is going to be the focal point, because a lot has happened in this time, all of which is interlinked. With the rise in the revenue of the Punjabi music industry, you see an increase in drug consumption and circulation of black money. Then the incidents of sacrilege, the crackdown on the Dera Sacha Sauda, and Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’s arrest, as well as the rise of the sand mafia – all of this took place in this timeframe.”

“In 2017, the Observer Research Foundation noted Punjab as the ‘transit point’ for the movement of drugs,” said Singh. “That’s when the alarm bells started ringing. From 2014 through 2017, the FIRs in relation to drugs have increased from 100 to 14,000 yearly. More than 30 people used to get arrested every day. Sometimes this figure went over 40. What led to this shift? Because terrorists supply money, drugs, and weapons, and, in return, they use the local gangsters’ networks. As a result, from 57 gangs and 500 gang members in 2016, now there are more than 500 gangs and 2,000 gang members. Lawrence Bishnoi and Jaggu Bhagwanpuria, who are involved in Moosewala’s murder, alone have 4,000 known hideouts. So it’s impossible to not talk about Punjab while talking about Moosewala’s murder.”

Licence to kill

About Moosewala’s songwriting, Singh said, “When I used to listen to Moosewala’s songs earlier, I didn’t focus on his lyrics. Then he used theth [raw] Punjabi and that too very fast; total rap tha uska. But, for the book, I had to dissect each word. Not once but several times. I also approached Punjabi poets who helped a lot but didn’t want their names to be disclosed. Bunty Bains, Moosewala’s financial manager, and his guru, Harvinder Rattu, helped, too. The latter, in fact, told me how an interaction between them about Shaheed Udham Singh’s life inspired Moosewala to write his first song Licence.”

Interestingly, things came full circle. The very words that popularised Moosewala cost him his life. One of his songs, in collaboration with Amrit Maan, Bambiha Bole, begins with a disclaimer that it may feel like a slap to a few people. The mention of the word bambiha hinted at the Davinder Bambiha gang, whose founder, at 26, was killed in a police encounter. According to the gangs that collaborated to get Moosewala eliminated, the singer was allegedly sympathetic towards the Bambiha gang. Additionally, a clip of Manpreet Singh alias Mannu Kusa, one of the killers, being beaten with slippers by the Bambiha gang members was leaked on the Internet sometime in 2015. For Kusa, this humiliation as a Dalit, was symbolic, the author notes in the book, and may have perhaps led him to join hands with the Bishnoi gang.

Both Goldy Brar and Lawrence Bishnoi, who have been accused of being involved in Moosewala’s murder, have said they felt challenged and provoked by Moosewala’s songs. Bambiha, however, “is also used in Gurbani,” Singh told me. In the book as well, he writes that Bains told him “‘bambiha’ or “babiha” or “papiha” [are] commonly used as metaphors for the soul’s love for god, quite like the bird’s longing for rain drops. The bird makes appearances in folksongs as the harbinger of monsoon.” But Moosewala did use a few unique words like maruta and tempo to mention and mock his rivals, Singh notes.

However, said Singh, “[Moosewala’s] music is his gift to the [Punjabi] language.” He said the “murder could have been prevented had the system intervened.” Here’s the context: the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab had promised to curb the VIP culture in the state by curtailing the security of its VVIPs and VIPs. However, the state did something that wasn’t done before: it made the list of names – all 424 of them – public on May 28, 2022. “This shouldn’t have been done,” Singh said. “Previously, even if journalists used to report on this, they never shared names. Only numbers. Until and unless someone tweeted the news personally, they were never named.” A day later, Moosewala was murdered.

A man with no filters

Singh points to the conversion of a thriving Punjab into a destabilised state where drug usage is rampant. While many may not know who’s to blame, Palvinder, mother of Roopa, one of those accused of killing Moosewala, thinks she does . In his book, Singh notes what she says: “[Roopa] was dead to us the day he became a drug addict. He sold household things. He looted from others too. But was it just our fault? No. The government is responsible for the tragic end Roopa and other youths like him meet with.”

“Saying that Kusa, a carpenter, had a brawl with a few people, got arrested, then became a gang member means nothing,” said Singh. “He was a Dalit. His sister and family were being harassed every day by upper-caste men. He was treated as paon di jutti [footwear, used symbolically to refer to upper-caste people’s treatment of Dalits], and the police never helped him. How does a carpenter become a gang member? The answer isn’t so simple. Hence, my effort was to humanise everyone, even the criminals.”

On the book’s back cover are printed select lines from Singh’s translation of Moosewala’s The Last Ride: The glow on his young man’s face suggests / He will be laid to rest in his youth. In the book, Singh noted that “death, it seems, was a constant motif in Moosewala’s work and music.” I wondered what Singh meant by this. Did Moosewala have a premonition ?

When I asked Singh this question, he told me an interesting anecdote that couldn’t be included in the book: “There was a piece of land that Moosewala wanted to purchase, but either the owner wasn’t interested in selling or there were some disputes. Moosewala was having golgappas at a rehri during the election campaign when his driver asked him, ‘Why are you after this land?’ Moosewala had said, Tu dekhna aethe tere bhai di smark banegi. And his memorial has been constructed on that very patch of land that he wanted! Why would someone say this?”

Singh looked at me, as if for an answer. “I think he was really different. I don’t consider myself his fan, but I think he was maturing as an artist,” he said. “After this book was released, I get at least 15 messages every day – both from his fans and his haters. I think there’s a lesson that artists can learn from his death, which is to not react on social media to everything that’s said about them. Moosewala needed someone to manage his social media professionally. But then that was who he was – he had no filters.”