The busy commercial-cum-residential lane on Loharka Road in Amritsar now bears witness to the stains of violence towards vulnerable communities on Punjab’s soil. LGBTQA+ influencer and makeup artist Mad Sandhu (officially named Madhusudan) was shot dead by unidentified bike-borne men on Saturday evening.
A day after the killing, news reports stated that posts on social media accounts claimed responsibility for Sandhu’s murder. Ironically, these posts are nowhere to be found now. One such claim was attributed to a post by a social media handle named Goldy Dhillon.
With speculations rife and police investigations under way, Sikh radical groups have also come under the radar following the news of a three-month-old audio-video clip allegedly featuring a confrontation between Sandhu and Nihang jathedar Manpreet Singh Khalsa.
Commissioner of Police, Amritsar, Harmanbir Singh Gill said, “We cannot verify the authenticity of these social media posts as they are posted from abroad. We are viewing this case from multiple angles, the investigation is going in the right direction and we will crack it soon.”
With over 2,32,000 followers on Instagram, Sandhu had built a career that extended well beyond the trolling he faced online. He was the founder of Mane Lane Unisex Salon and had appeared in the film Oye Bhola Oye 2, songs like Ragda and drama-comedy-thriller web series Youth Kartoot.
Sandhu’s murder has evoked strong responses both online and offline — from the LGBTQA+ communities in Punjab to the political spectrum.
“It is probably because this is the first such crime against a person from the LGBTQA+ community in Punjab, even though they have been discriminated against for a long time now,” said Manu, a member of Queering in Chandigarh, an LGBTQA+ collective formed in 2022.
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