Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu also known as Sidhu Moose Wala was shot dead near Mansa in punjab today a day after his security was withdrawn.
His heart always beat for his village Moosa. “That is why I chose to be known not by my name but by that of my village,” he told people as he went from village to village to seek votes. He had the Congress ticket from Mansa, where he contested against the AAP’s Vijay Singla.
“I will live here and I will die here”: This is a line that he repeated at every rally and every roadside meeting while campaigning for the Punjab Assembly elections held in February this year. Moosewala, 27 was the only child of his parents who got his breakthrough with the song “So High” in 2017, a gangster rap collaboration with Byg Byrd. This song won him the 2017 Best Lyricist award at the Brit Asia TV Music Awards. He continued his success with singles like “Issa Jatt”, “Tochan”, “Selfmade”, “Famous” and “Warning Shots”
Moose Wala was a self-made pop sensation. he was booked under the Arms Act for firing an AK-47 rifle at a shooting range during the lockdown. He was also booked for promoting violence along with gun culture with his song “Sanju”.
Surprisingly, he ran a very different campaign in which he made a clean environment his poll plank. “We need to clean up air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat, along with our political system,” he would say
The other cause Moose Wala worked for was cander. He used to organise an annual free cancer camp in his village. He also fancied himself as a farmer and had invested in land using his handsome earnings from music.
His songs he wrote and composed himself made it to the Top 5 in the UK charts last year. Things came to such a pass that once his mother Charan Kaur asked him to take a vow that he would only sing hymns from gurbani.
If there is one person that he was scared of, it was his mother. He had gone from house to house to seek votes for her in the 2018 Panchayat elections. Needless to say, she won.