World Of Secrets - The Killing Call: 3. The gangsters

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Thousands from across India crowd the streets for Sidhu Moose Wala’s funeral, to grieve one of Punjab’s famous sons. Millions more watch. Flowers are thrown at the coffin, pulled by his favourite tractor. Amongst the grief are anger and unanswered questions– why was he not better protected? And we find out more about the world he was caught up in. Presented by broadcaster and DJ Bobby Friction and investigative journalist Ishleen Kaur.Season 8 of World of Secrets, The Killing Call, is a BBC Eye investigation for the BBC World Service. Archive audio credits: NDTV, India Today, Pun Yaab, Lovepreet Waraich, BritAsiaTV, CBC, CTV, WIONHere’s a link to the BBC Eye two-part documentary films, which we recommend you watch after listening to this podcast: https://bit.ly/thekillingcall If you are in the UK, you can watch on iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002f18y

Before we start, don't forget there are seven previous seasons of World of Secrets, the BBC's global investigations podcast. They're available right now and are waiting for you once you've finished this episode. It's two days after Sidhu Musiala was killed. In his small village of Musa in northern India, the streets are swollen with people. Thousands have travelled here for his cremation. Cues stretch along the usually quiet roads in the scorching May heat. Sidhu Musewala embarks on the final journey. You see an ocean of fans there who landed up at his village.

You know, to see people coming from far off places, from all over the country they came. Some may have come from abroad also. Millions are tuning into the live news feeds. Among them, the journalist, Chippindajit Singh. Everyone was crying, Ishleen. You could see the tears in the TV broadcasts, on YouTube and everywhere. I think not just me, every Punjabi that day was glued to the TV.

Suddenly, there's movement at the front of Sidhu's family house. The crowd surges forward. Sidhu's favorite tractor pulls onto the road. Behind it is a trailer carrying a glass coffin. The trailer is covered with flowers. And here we're looking at the final rights that's going to be carried out in just moments from now. This is his last journey.

The crowd throws more flowers. There are chants of long live Sidhu Musiala. But there's anger too. You can see the youth from the village raising slogans here. People want to know, why wasn't he better protected? Raising slogans against the government for curtailing his security. And they believe that this was the primary reason for his killing. protected. His parents sit on the trailer beside their son's body,

A good look at Sidhu Mosewala, the final time, wiping off tears from family members has left us really heartbroken. The funeral procession makes its short but slow journey from the family house to the family field where he'll be cremated. Here, thousands more mourners wait in the midday sun on the scorched brown grass around a pyramid of firewood. This is the funeral pyre where they'll place his body. On the way to the cremation site, something extraordinary happens. Sidlu's father stands on the trailer that's carrying his dead son's body. He's above the crowd and thousands of eyes watch

as he lifts his turban from his head and holds it out towards the people. You know, his hands were shaking and he took a circle, you know, all around him where he was offering his turban. And I remember people around him went like, no, no, no, please don't do this. There's a sense of shock. For many Sikh men, their turban is a sacred sign of their faith. You only take it off in the privacy of your own home, never in public. Taking off his turban, he was offering some gratitude he will not be able to offer in words. It was from his deepest inside, you know,

something which he can't speak. Watching the funeral here in London, that moment, it ripped my heart apart because as Sikhs and as Punjabis, we know what that means. Yeah, it was a very difficult thing to view. It was a gesture of pleading also, you know, pleading for arrest of the killers, pleading for justice,

justice for his son. There's so much grief, so much anger, so many questions. We need to find the gangster who says he's responsible for the killing of Sidhu Musiala. We need to find Goldie Braar. This is World of Secrets, Season Eight. The Killing Call, a BBC World Service investigation. I am investigative journalist Ishleen Kaur. And I'm broadcaster and DJ Bobby Friction. Friction. Episode 3 – The Gangsters

Jasbir Tandi and his family live in a modern house with a lawn and a garage on a residential estate in a suburb of Vancouver. Like Sidhu and the many other Punjabis who live here, Jasvir left India to make a new life here in Canada. Now, in his early thirties, with a quick smile and an open, expressive face, he works doing what so many Punjabis who come to Canada end up doing, driving trucks long distance. And he's doing well. As Jasbir plays with his two-year-old son in the large open-plan kitchen, he tells me how he and Sidhu became friends. And how, for a while, Sidhu lived here with them.

For three months in 2018, just as Sidhu's music career is taking off, this house is the place that Sidhu calls home. Even before I met him, I was his fan. And then when I met him, he was so gentle, very shy guy. Not like his songs. He was not aggressive like that. So he was very soft and kind-hearted guy. To my mom, he was like, mom, my hair, my hair,

give me oil, like his own mom. Jusbhi just said that whenever Sidhu would come here, he would ask Jusbhi's mom to comb his hair, to oil his hair, help him tie the turban. And it is traditionally what a Sikh mom would do for her child. I think he was born rapper, like representing his own life in the songs. He was so inspired and then he said he's gonna bring Hollywood to Moosa Bend and then it's happening. He was so passionate even like if you go to Washington he wrote a song. Sidhu is living with Jasbir when he plays that show in Edmonton, the one we heard back in episode one, where

he comes onto the stage and talks about receiving death threats. Jasbir, because you knew Sidhu so well, do you know of any threats that he got? Everyone got threats in the Punjabi industry, I believe. Yeah, and Sidhu got, start from 2018, and that time he sang a song East Side Flow and he said Tum ki sveere chana goliyali meldiye. So yeah that's why he wrote the song. That song that Jaspee is talking about it translates to when I wake up with my morning tea I get an extortion call or I get a threat. I'm a truck driver and I used to go to Calgary that time and he came with me on a truck that East Side Flow song he wrote in a truck.

Yeah, when we left Calgary and then after 45 minutes he had a song. Did he ever come to you, you know, like after a call? Did he share anything like that? No, he never tell like any details. He never tell anyone. Even his parents, he never tell. Just we were talking outside and you said, whenever Sidhu would leave your house, he would send you his location. Was he scared of something?

What was he scared of? No, he was not scared. But he always said that, bro, one day I'm going to die with a bullet. I know that. That was his words. And then he got those bad dreams like, oh, someone is killing him.

Yeah. Were you worried about him as a friend? Yeah, we always got worried. We told him. Yeah. Were you worried about him as a friend? Yeah, we always got worried. We told him, but he said, no, no, no, bro. It's okay. It's okay. He was not scared of a death. He said, one day we're going to die. It's around the time Sidhu's living with Jasbir that this gorky Punjabi student is being catapulted from Village Boy to global megastar. Sidhu Musnala! And with big success comes big money.

Come on, come on, come on. Did you hit the car? No, I didn't. Now, when he travels, it's in a convoy of cars, stretch limos, sports cars, SUVs, and around him an entourage of young Punjabi men with freshly groomed beards and dark shades. He's living the life of a star.

But fame makes you a target and so does money. Those threatening calls and messages, they just keep coming. is they just keep coming. When Sidhu's old university friend Pushpdeep sees him again two years later, he notices a big change. He had become like a whole lot of a serious guy at that point. I had spent so much time with him, I could look at his face and I could say that from his face that he had some problems. Pushpdeep never imagined that Sidhu's problems could be gangs. He used to tell me to be safe and stay away from this kind of stuff and I know

that he wasn't that kind of guy. But Pushpdeep does feel anxious about the company his friend was keeping. He was ruling the singing industry at that point and he was on the peak and people just want to take advantage of his fame. He was always surrounded by so many people that he didn't get a chance to converse properly to all those people that were literally so close to his heart. He was always surrounded by 10 or 12 men and he couldn't afford to be vulnerable in front of those guys because, you know, he was such a big artist and such a strong artist and people

would think that he's weak. Not looking weak, bravado, honour, machismo, it's all an essential part of Punjabi male culture. It's been a big part of the gangster rap trend in hip hop too. In Sidhu's videos there's big brawny men looking tough, flexing their muscles, luxury cars, police chases, guns, so many guns and there's Siddu constantly looking down the camera lens, looking directly at you, almost asking you to start it, to bring it to him. You know, there's a move he does where he slaps his thigh. It's a move from Punjab's national sport, kabaddi. We call it a tapi.

It's provocative. It's aggressive. It means come on, bring it on. It means, come on, bring it on. And all of this playing out in Sidhu's videos sees Sidhu literally playing the role of being a gangster. Violence is something lots of rappers have been asked about in interviews, and Sidhu's no exception. Here, the interviewer asks, people say your songs are about gangsters, about beating people

up. They're arrogant. How do you respond? I've been listening to hip hop since I was in the sixth grade. And it is violent. But if someone does something wrong after they've been listening, maybe it is the bad company that they're keeping, not the music. I've been listening to hip hop for years and I've never shot anyone

But the trouble is Sidhu is working in a world where real gangsters operate real gangsters with real guns who make threats with real consequences In fact was someone who had a certain amount of threat from gangsters. When he was facing severe death threats from several gangsters in the country. Ever since that day in London, when my brother called from Canada and together we were watching the rolling news coverage of Sidhu's death, I've been determined to find out why Sidhu was killed. I've spoken to lots of people about this. His friends, journalists, politicians, people in the

music industry and almost all of them are fearful. I hear it again and again. They were threatening Sidhu. They were asking for the rights to his songs. It's too frightening even to use the word because they means gangsters. I realized the only person who can tell me really what's going on is someone from that world. Someone who is a gangster himself. It's taken me months of chasing, hundreds of messages and calls, but at last, a major player in the world

of Punjabi organized crime has agreed to talk to me. We're not going to identify him for security reasons. We agreed to meet in a downtown hotel in a North American city to talk, off the record. I'm there early, not sure if he'll show. I sit waiting, watching the door, my stomach in knots. I sit waiting, watching the door, my stomach in knots. We've agreed to meet at 9pm. The hours tick by. 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock. When he finally arrives, it's one in the morning.

He steps into the lobby among the well-heeled late diners. He's in his late 20s. He's wearing torn jeans and designer trainers. His eyes burn into me. After we've talked for a few minutes, he asks if he can show me something. Out of his pocket, he takes an object wrapped in a handkerchief. It's a revolver. He unwraps it and smiles, watching for my reaction. And then he rewraps it and carefully places it back in his pocket. When it comes to recording an interview, he insists he won't do it face to face.

So we agree to talk later, online. He tells me those threat calls, like the ones that Sidhu got, are usually made to extort money. Or sometimes when they're talking to musicians to get the rights for songs. The rewards can be huge. Sidhu's music alone has had billions of streams and views. I ask, how do they decide who to extort? We're talking in Punjabi, so an actor is voicing what he says.

I have got a network of people in different cities across India, and they give me contacts and information. We never ask for money from people who cannot afford it. But if someone is worth $100 million, then we will ask them for $5 million. We never threaten on the first call. We just say politely, we need the money. And if they do it, if they pay, everything's fine.

If they don't, well, then we know what to do to get the money. What happens then? I press him. What does he mean? What do they do? All he'll say is, whatever we want. But we know… Tonight police are on the hunt for a suspect who opened fire on a residential home in Surrey. There have been too many reports of killings in Punjab and in Canada. Gunshots were reportedly fired outside Singa, Gipi, Glewongs…

A note left at the scene of the shooting suggests an ongoing feud involving Punjabi singers and organised crime… and reports of their well-to-do houses of musicians and businessmen being shot at. I push him. He's killed people. He's a wanted man in India. Shouldn't he be behind bars? Where does all this end? He's cold. He says, we're gonna keep doing this. Everyone's end is death. And is it true that they target musicians?

Yes, singers get extortion calls and they have to pay. And it's not just singers. Wealthy businessmen get extortion calls too. Then he says something that really surprises me. We gangsters have a lot of singers who we speak to. They're friends, but that doesn't mean they're involved in gangs. It's like any relationship. We meet, we chat, we mix in the same circles. We help each other. If they need help, they ask us.

Is that right? Do some musicians and gangsters talk to each other? Are some even friends? He makes it all sound so normal. I ask him, do musicians ever ask gangsters to help protect them against other gangsters? Yeah, that does happen. They have to pay protection money, of course. And when they get extortion calls, they have to pay. It happens all the time. After speaking for over an hour, we disconnect. I'm exhausted. I'm reeling from what I've heard. If contacts between musicians and gangsters are as widespread as he says they are, could it be Sidhu was talking to gangsters?

Did he know some of them? Did he even count some as friends? There was public outrage after that press conference on the day that Sidhu died when police said that he'd been killed because of gang rivalry. People took it as implying Sidhu himself was somehow linked to the gangs. The head of Punjab police came out quickly to say he'd been misunderstood. But did links to gangs play a part in his death? We need to know. Our strongest lead is the person who says he was responsible for Sidney Murciela's killing, the gangster Goldie Bra. The problem is we're not the only people trying to find him. There's an international arrest warrant out for him.

The last anyone heard Goldie Bra was in Canada. I get in touch with a journalist who got the call from Goldie Bra on the night Sidhu died. That call where Goldie Bra takes responsibility for the hit. He gives me the number that he called Goldie Bra back on that night. I send a message. Sir, I'm Shalini Kaur from BBC News in London. that he called Kaldibra back on that night. I send a message. I explain who I am and why I want to talk to him

and ask if he'll speak to me. Then I wait by my phone. The hours turn into days, then weeks. There's silence. Nothing. It's a dead end. Then suddenly, two months later, out of the blue, I get a message back. All it says is we've got your message. We've passed it on to our brother. Goldie Braar. To understand the gangsters and how they linked to Sidhu's journey, we're in Punjab 2018.

It's always amazing to see Sidhu Musiala on stage. He's got such presence. Put your hands together for the final, Lisa, Judge Sidhu Musiala! But this concert is special. It's his first concert back home. There's huge excitement amongst the young crowd. Hello, everyone. I'm Chandigarh. amongst the young crowd. Greetings, people of Chandigarh, Siddhi tells them. This is my first performance in India, and I salute you.

I think he was booked for a few other concerts throughout Chandigarh, but he chose to come to Punjab University first. That was a space that he wanted to capture. I personally feel Siddu came to capture the imagination of Punjab's youth. Today, Raja Sanmaan Bir Singh is a media advisor to some of Punjab's leading politicians. But back in 2018, he was a student at Punjab University and he helped organise the show. It was amazing.

Usually you prepare for 4000-5000 students. Siddu probably had more than 12000-14000 students come up. It was way beyond our expectations. We were not prepared for that. 10 minutes before Siddu showed up, there was just a sea of people standing. Punjab University has a special place in Punjabi society. It's not just where young people come to study, it's a power center.

Somewhere that prepares future political leaders, industrialists, academics, writers and artists. What happens here matters. It's a powerful platform. And for some people, giving that platform to someone like Sidhu could be dangerous. Which is why one university professor tried to stop him performing. So there's this one professor who got a stay against Sidhu Musawalla from the High Court. That he cannot sing any of his songs which glorify his violence, gun culture.

So all of the songs that he was actually famous for, that people knew him for, he didn't sing a single song. Standing on stage, Sidhu speaks to the crowd. You want to make a big fuss about the university show, what happened to Sidhu Moosawala's pistol? Recently, people said Sidhu's going to bring guns to the concert, that he glorifies weapons. But this is a democracy. You've got the right to disagree with me.

It's fine if you oppose me. I think that was the first time people got to see the resistance to Sidhu. There was a faction against Sidhu Mosewala performing in Punjab University and there was a faction that really wanted him to perform in Punjab University. The faction that wants Sidhu to perform wins of course. And when Sidhu steps onto the university stage, even the presence of the police doesn't stop the students going wild. His music, it was crazy. It's the sort of music that caused a big disruption. The topics

he chose to touch, the issues that some would say could be the core issues of Punjab that maybe our politicians today are not addressing. He addressed those issues through his songs. Mm, mm, mm. Oh, for the alcohol, I'm not talking about the alcohol, I'm talking about the intoxication. These days, Siddiq says,

you must have seen they're after all of our singers, saying we're writing songs about alcohol. I didn't say that. Well, I wrote a song today. He holds up a piece of paper, waving it to the crowd. It's called Chitta. Do you know what Chitta means? It means truth.

I'm not taking sides. I'm just telling the truth. He starts to sing. the truth he starts to sing. They say there are songs about alcohol on TV, but I want to know why are there more liquor stores in Punjab than there are schools? Why don't you close the businesses of people making money by selling addiction?

You know, we'll stop singing songs about weapons when you have the guts to ban weapons. Sidhu reached out to those young minds. Punjab and especially the youth of Punjab, they are directionless. If a Punjabi youth who is aged 15, 16, 17, he feels he has got no opportunity in life if he stays back in India in his village in Punjab, there is this misconception in his head that he flies off to Australia or Canada, anywhere abroad and everything is going to be sorted for him. Sidhu's music, it was a resurgence for them. It provided that motivation that was missing. So yes, everyone's listening to Siddhu Mooseala.

He really affected the lifestyle, the culture, of not just me, a lot of people. This is the moment that Siddhu Mooseala starts articulating what many young people in Punjab want to hear. He's becoming someone they want to listen to, someone with influence. And Punjab University has another role in the story too. It's another busy day in the newsroom

at the Tribune newspaper in Chandigarh. Journalist Japinderjeet Singh is now the paper's deputy editor. Japinderjeet's been covering Punjab's gangs for years. Yes, since the advent of gangsterism from 2012 onwards, when this menace really took over, every part of India has its own gangs, whether it is Uttar Pradesh or Delhi or Haryana. So gangs are everywhere. It's only that Punjab is one of the more developed areas. It's the opium trade in nearby Afghanistan, Japindajit says, that has fed this growth

in Punjab's criminal underworld. The drugs flow south, across the border, from Afghanistan into Pakistan, and then down into Indian Punjab. Suddenly, Punjab became number one in country as far as drug smuggling was concerned. Before that, Punjab was the transit point for drugs. But, you know, from that, it started becoming the consumption point

also, 2012 onwards. And with the drugs comes the money, money that needs to be laundered. 2012, 13 onwards, there was a big boom in real estate in Punjab, big boom in liquor industry, big boom in sand mining also. These are the businesses which we all feel have a lot of black money or unaccounted money. So all these things, you know, and there was a huge tug of war between two main political

parties, the Congress and the Akalas. And it was very common for them to use, you know, special muscle men, if we can use the word, or even goons. And these were all youngsters who were taken from colleges and universities. Those muscle men came out of student politics, and several of them had some kind of a criminal history. This group includes one particular young student from Punjab University. A man about the same age as Sidhu from a relatively well-to-do family. He got involved in student politics. But words became actions. Disagreements became fights.

There was violence with other student groups. He was a student leader turned gangster and he was involved in several crimes. And he was kind of high profile, but not that high profile. Of course, he was in news for threatening Bollywood star Salman Khan. ..impact on Bollywood superstar Salman Khan's death threat. Heavy security has been beefed up at Salman Khan.... impact on Bollywood superstar Salman Khan's death threat. Heavy security has been beefed up as Salman's residence images capture...

He was sent to prison in 2014 on charges of attempted murder, where he's been behind bars ever since. His name is Lawrence Bishnoi. And incredibly, being imprisoned doesn't seem to have stopped his criminal career. Quite the opposite opposite in fact. From behind bars, Lawrence Bishnoi is alleged to have grown a criminal network whose activities reach from India to Canada and maybe further. Today, on his payroll, his own people say they have several hundred people. Punjab has you

know about 500 gangs which are administered by ten mother gangs and Lawrence Bishno's gang is one of those gangs. Out of these ten gangs four are aligned with Lawrence and four are aligned with his biggest rival, the Bambiha gang. And the gang wars which had led to 16, 17 killings, we had reported those also. But then something happens that supercharges Lawrence Bishnoi's profile. Throughout this series, we've heard about the threatening calls that Sidhu was receiving. We can't know for sure who was calling or if they all come from the same source.

But, ever since my hotel lobby meeting with that gangster, I've been trying to find out if someone in the gangs had a hold on Sidhu. After all, Sidhu was one of Punjab's highest earning musicians. He seems like an obvious target. I've spoken to so many people about this. Finally, sources close to Sidhu have told me that for at least a couple of years before he died, Sidhu was talking to a Punjabi gangster. Do you remember that phone call that we heard in episode 2? Hello? Sidhu was talking to a Punjabi gangster. Do you remember that phone call that we heard in episode 2?

Hello, hello, yes, yes, I'm speaking. The ones who were prison in Delhi, an hour after Sidhu Mooseala was killed. I don't know. When the caller said, we've killed the Sikh, we've killed Sidhu Mooseala. I don't know. And the prisoner replied saying, cut the call. Well that prisoner was the same gang leader that Sidhu Musiala had been talking to. That prisoner is the leader of the gang Goldie Bra is part of. That prisoner is Lawrence Pishnoi. Why did Lawrence Pishnoi become Sidhu Musiala's

enemy? That's next eight of World of Secrets from the BBC World Service. The Killing Call is a BBC Eye production. Leave us a rating or a review if you can. It really helps. And follow or subscribe so you get every episode automatically. World of Secrets The Killing Call is presented by me, Ishleen Kaur. And me, Bobby Friction. It's produced by Louise Hidalgo, Rob Wilson and Eamon Kwaja with script advice from Matt Willis.

Sound designer Mix is by Tom Brignol and the executive producer is Rebecca Henschke. The editor is Daniel Adamson and the BBC iSeries producer is Ankur Jain. Original music by Ashish Zakariya. Fact checking is by Curtis Gallant. Additional research by Ajit Sarati and Arvind Chhabra. The production manager is Dawn MacDonald, and the production coordinator is Katie Morrison. Many thanks to the BBC World Service Commissioning team that's behind World of Secrets. And thank you for listening.