Soutik Biswas and Ishlin Kaur
BBC Eye
It was a murder that shocked India: a hitman shot Punjabi hip-hop star Sidhu Moosa Wala through the windshield of his car.
Within hours, Punjabi gangster Goldy Brar took to Facebook to claim responsibility for ordering the murder.
But three years after the crime, no one has yet been brought to justice for it – and Goldie Brar is still on the run and no one knows where he is.
Now BBC Eye has managed to get in touch with Brar and ask him questions about how and why Sidhu Moose Wala became a target.
His response was coldly articulated.
"In his arrogance, Mus Wala made some mistakes that were unforgivable," Brar told the BBC World Service.
"We had no choice but to kill him. He had to face the consequences of his actions. It was either him or us. It's that simple."
On a warm May evening in 2022, Sidhu Moose Wala was taking his black Mahindra Tar SUV for a routine drive along the dusty tracks near his home village in the northern Indian state of Punjab when, within minutes, two cars started following him.
Security camera footage later showed them chasing him through narrow passages, driving very close to him.
And then, at the next bend in the road, one of the vehicles surged forward, pinning Moos Val's SUV against the wall.
He was stuck.
A few moments later, the shooting began.
A cellphone video captured the aftermath.
His SUV was riddled with bullets, the windshield shattered, the hood punctured.
In trembling voices, passersby expressed shock and concern.
"Someone pulled him out of the car."
"Bring water."
"They shot at Moose Wala."
But it was too late.
He was pronounced dead immediately upon arrival at the hospital – shot with 24 bullets, an autopsy would later show.
The 28-year-old rapper, one of the biggest cultural icons of modern Punjab, was shot in broad daylight.
A relative and friend who was in the car with Musa Val at the time of the ambush was injured but survived.
The six attackers were eventually identified.
They were carrying AK-47 assault rifles and pistols.
In the weeks following the murder, around thirty people were arrested and two suspected gunmen were killed in what Indian police described as "encounters" with her.
And yet, even after the arrests began to pile up, the motive remained unclear.
Goldie Brar, who claims to have ordered the murder, was not in India at the time of the crime.
It is believed that he was in Canada.
Our conversation with him lasted a total of more than six hours, connected by the exchange of a series of voice messages.
They allowed us to discover why Mus Vala was killed and to learn the motives of the man who claimed responsibility for his death.
Sidhu Moose Wala was born Shubdeep Singh Sidhu to a Jat Sikh family in rural Punjab, before moving to Canada in 2016 to study engineering – a journey familiar to hundreds of thousands of members of the Punjabi diaspora.
But there, far from his home village of Musa – the inspiration for his rap name – he transformed into one of the most influential artists in the Punjabi music scene.
In just five years, Mus Wala has become the unmistakable voice of Punjabi hip-hop.
With his signature swagger, flamboyant style and lyrical rawness, Moose Wala sang openly about identity and politics, guns and revenge, pushing the boundaries of what Punjabi music was willing to say.
He was fascinated by rapper Tupac Shakur, who was murdered in 1996 at the age of 25.
"In terms of character, I want to be like him," Mus Vala said in an interview.
"The day he died, people cried for him. I want the same thing. When I die, people should remember that I was someone and something."
During a short but explosive career, the singer highlighted the darker sides of India's Punjab region - gangster culture, unemployment and political rot - while also conjuring a deep nostalgia for rural life.
Mus Vala was also a world power.
With over five billion views of his videos on YouTube, a number five spot on the UK charts and collaborations with international hip-hop stars such as Burna Boy, Moose Wala quickly built a fan base spanning India, Canada, the UK and beyond, fueled by a diaspora that saw him as both an icon and a rebel.
But fame had a price.
Despite his rising star and his socially conscious lyrics, Mus Walla began to venture into dangerous territory.
His defiant attitude, visibility and growing influence attracted the attention of Punjab's most notorious gangsters.
They included Goldie Brar, as well as Brar's good friend Lawrence Bishnoi, who was already in a maximum-security prison in India.
Not much is known about Brar, other than the fact that he is on Interpol's red notice and is a key operative in the gangster network run by Bishnoi - organizing assassinations, sending threats, and expanding the gang's reach.
It is believed that he immigrated to Canada in 2017, just a year after Musa Wale himself, and initially worked as a truck driver.
Bishnoi, once a student leader steeped in the violent campus politics of Punjab, has grown into one of India's most notorious criminal masterminds.
"The first police charges filed against Lawrence Bishnoi were related to student politics and student elections... he beat up a rival student leader, kidnapped him, injured him," according to Jupinderjit Singh, deputy editor of the Indian newspaper The Tribune.
This led to his stint in prison, after which he became an even more hardened criminal, says Gurmeet Singh Chauhan, deputy inspector general of the Punjab Police's anti-gangster task force.
"Once he was in prison, he started to sink deeper into crime. Then he formed his own group. When it became a matter of gang rivalry, he needed money to survive. He needed more men, he needed more weapons. He needed money for all of that. And so, for the money, you have to get into extortion and crime."
Now 31, Bishnoi runs his own syndicate from prison – with specialized Instagram pages and a cult-like following.
"So, while Bishnoi is in jail, Brar is running the gangs," says Deputy Inspector General Chauhan.
For BBC Eye to get an interview with Brar, it took a year of searching – cultivating sources, waiting for answers, gradually approaching the big boss in person.
But when we finally reached Brar, the conversation shed new light on how and why he and Bishnoi perceived Musa Wala as an enemy.
One of the first revelations was that Bishnoi's relationship with Musa Wala went back several years, long before the singer's murder.
"Lawrence Bishnoi was in contact with Sidhu Moosa Wala. I don't know who introduced them, and I never asked him. But they did talk," Brar said.
"Sidu used to send 'good morning' and 'good night' messages to ingratiate himself with Lawrence."
A friend of Musa Wale, who wished to remain anonymous, told us that Bishnoi had been in contact with Musa Wale since 2018, calling him from prison and telling him that he liked his music.
Brar told us that the "first fight" between them broke out after Moos Wala moved back to India.
It began with a seemingly innocent match of kabaddi – a traditional South Asian contact team sport – in a village in Punjab.
Mus Wala was promoting a tournament organized by Bishnoi's rivals – the Bambih gang – Brar told us, in a sport where match-fixing and gangster influences are commonplace.
"That's the village where our rivals come from. He promoted our rivals. That's when Lawrence and others got angry with him. They threatened Sidhu and told him they wouldn't spare him," Brar told the BBC.
Yet the dispute between Musa Wala and Bishnoi was ultimately resolved by Bishnoi's associate named Vicky Midukera.
But when Midukera himself was mowed down by gangsters in a Mohali parking lot in August 2021, Brar told us that Bishnoi's hostility towards Sidhu Moosa Wali reached the point of no return.
The Bambiha gang claimed responsibility for Midukera's murder.
Police named Musa Wale's friend and occasional manager Shaganpreet Singh in the chargesheet, citing evidence that Singh provided information and logistical support to the attackers.
Singh later fled India and is now believed to be in Australia.
Mus Vala denied any involvement in this crime.
Punjab Police told the BBC that there was no evidence linking Musa Wala to the murder or to any gang crime.
But Moose Wala was friends with Shaganpreet Singh and was never able to shake off the perception that he was connected to the Bambih gang – a perception that may have cost him his life.
Although he cannot offer evidence of Musa Wala's involvement, Brar remains convinced that the singer was somehow complicit in Midukera's murder.
Brar repeatedly told us that Shaganpreet Singh had been helping the attackers in the days leading up to Midukera's murder – implying that Moose Wala himself must have been involved somehow.
"Everyone knew about Sidhu's role, the police who were investigating knew, even the journalists who were investigating knew. Sidhu was associating with politicians and powerful people. He used political power, money, resources to help our rivals," Brar told the BBC.
"We wanted him punished for what he did. They should have brought him in. They should have locked him up. But no one listened to our appeals."
"And that's why we took it upon ourselves. When everyone else is deaf to our decency, then the only thing you hear is the gunshots."
We pointed out to Brar that India has a judiciary and the rule of law – how can he justify taking the law into his own hands?
"Law. Justice. There's no such thing," he says.
"Only the powerful can get justice, not ordinary people like us."
He added that even Vicky Midukere's brother, despite being involved in politics, had trouble getting justice through the Indian judicial system.
"He's an honest guy. He did his best to get justice for his brother through legal means. Please call him and ask him how he's doing."
He seemed unrepentant.
"I did what I had to do for my brother. I don't regret anything."
The murder of Musa Wala not only resulted in the loss of a great musical talent, but also emboldened gangsters in Punjab.
Before the singer's murder, few people outside Punjab had heard of Bishnoi or Brar.
After the murder, you could hear their names everywhere.
They hijacked Musa Wale's fame and turned it into their own kind of notoriety – a notoriety that became a powerful tool for extorting money.
"This is the biggest murder to happen in Punjab in the last few decades," says Ritesh Laki, a journalist from Punjab.
"The ability of gangsters to extort money has increased. Goldie Brar is getting huge amounts of money after killing Musa Wala."
Journalist Jupinderjit Singh agrees: "The fear factor around gangsters has increased among the public."
Extortion has long been a problem in the Punjabi music industry, but now, after Sidhu's murder, Singh says, "It's not just people in the music and film industries who are being extorted anymore - even local businessmen are getting calls."
When BBC Eye asked Brar about this, he denied that this was the motive, but he did admit – and unequivocally – that extortion was the gangs' main source of income.
"To feed a family of four, a person has to struggle their whole life. We have to take care of hundreds, maybe thousands of people who are like family to us. We have to extort money from other people."
"In order for us to get money," he says, "they have to be afraid of us."
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