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Mad Sandhu built a career across makeup, fashion, Punjabi entertainment and social media while speaking openly about his sexuality and experiences with gender and masculinity. He had built businesses, an audience and plans for the next stage of his career when he was shot dead in Amritsar on October 3. As the investigation continues, his story points to the hostility queer creators can face, and to a wider culture of moral policing, harassment and violence that shapes who feels safe being visible in India.
Madhusudan or Mad Sandhu spent much of his career making himself visible. Makeup was his profession, Instagram was part of his workplace, and his clothes, mannerisms, and sense of humour became part of what people knew him for. He had built a salon in Amritsar, worked in Punjabi entertainment and accumulated more than 230,000 followers online. On October 3rd, he posted a reel of himself lip-syncing to G Khan’s 'Mahi Milade'. Later that day, he was shot outside a car wash in Amritsar.
The details surrounding the incident are still being investigated. Police have been examining CCTV footage and other evidence, while social-media accounts linked to gangsters have claimed responsibility for the shooting. Police have dismissed those posts as unauthenticated. What is known is that Sandhu had been dealing with threats before he died, and that his family had approached the police for protection. His death followed a history of harassment that had already become part of his life.
Sandhu had spent years building a public identity around makeup, fashion, Punjabi entertainment, and conversations about gender and sexuality. He was candid about his sexuality and spoke about his experiences with masculinity and growing up in Punjab. He also spoke about being mocked for dancing and behaving in ways that people around him considered feminine. As his career grew, those parts of him became inseparable from his work: the makeup artist, the man in the clothes people commented on, and the creator speaking directly to an audience about his life. His online presence gave him a career and a community, while also giving strangers plenty to judge.
That tension had been visible for years. Sandhu had spoken about the trolling he received and about learning to accept himself after growing up with rigid ideas about how boys were supposed to behave. In one interview, he spoke about asking why he had been made this way and later arriving at his own answer. His response to people who objected to his sexuality was tied to his faith too: he believed God had made him the person he was. For Sandhu, sexuality was not an internet persona he had invented for an audience. It was part of a life he had spent years learning to live publicly.
His work had also taken him well beyond social media. He spent time in Mumbai working in beauty and fashion, attended the Lakmé Fashion Week, served as a jury member at makeup competitions, and worked on Punjabi films. He founded the Mane Lane Unisex Salon in Amritsar and ran beauty academies. His father has said that Sandhu supported his family through his work and was always looking towards the next project. He was reportedly preparing to appear as a wildcard contestant on Bigg Boss and was due to leave for Mumbai on the 20th of October.
The scrutiny around him had also become more public. Earlier this year, a Nihang figure objected to Sandhu’s older social-media content, clothing and mannerisms, saying that his videos could have a negative influence on Punjab’s youth. Sandhu subsequently said that he had stopped posting some of the content being criticised. Police are investigating whether that confrontation has any connection to his murder, but no such link has been established. That distinction matters because Sandhu’s story already contains enough evidence of hostility without assigning a motive that investigators have not confirmed.
What makes the story harder to dismiss as one isolated act of violence is the culture surrounding it. Sandhu was not the first creator in Punjab to have his work treated as a moral offence. In 2025, social-media creator Kanchan Kumari, known as Kanchan Bhabhi, was killed in Bathinda. Police said the accused believed her online content was immoral and had hurt Sikh sentiments. The two cases are different, and there is no evidence that they are connected, but the similarity in the language around them is difficult to ignore: a creator’s clothes, sexuality, videos and perceived influence become grounds for other people to decide what should be allowed in public.
That kind of moral policing comes from a much wider problem with violence in India. People who are visibly queer, religious minorities, women, and members of other marginalised groups can all find themselves subjected to threats, harassment, and attempts to control how they speak, dress, move through public space, and present themselves online. Sandhu’s case does not tell us that his sexuality caused his death. It does show how quickly the language used against someone can move from criticism of their work to criticism and even outright denial of their right to be the person they are.
The internet makes this especially difficult for creators because visibility is part of the job. Sandhu could not have built a makeup business, an audience or a career in entertainment without showing people who he was. A 2025 report by Equality Now and Breakthrough documented online harassment against women and LGBTQIA+ people in India, including stalking, doxxing, image-based abuse and other forms of technology-facilitated violence. These attacks can affect where people go, what they post, and how freely they participate online.
That does not mean every queer creator is living under an imminent threat of physical violence. It does mean that the distance between an abusive comment, a public threat, and something more serious cannot always be assumed. Sandhu had already received threats. His family had already sought protection. He had already been told that the way he dressed and behaved could have consequences for other people. He was still going to work, running his businesses, making videos, and planning a trip to Mumbai.
This is where the wider cultural question comes in. India has made important legal progress on queer rights, but legal recognition does not automatically settle the social argument over who is allowed to be visible, desirable, feminine, masculine, religious, irreligious or even just different in public. Sandhu’s career existed within that contradiction. He had built a successful business, worked in entertainment, and reached hundreds of thousands of people, while still being treated by some as a “problem” that needed correction.
For people who work in culture, that should matter beyond the circumstances of one murder. Sandhu was part of the same world of creators, artists, makeup artists, performers and small business owners whose work shapes what people see, buy, wear and talk about. His Instagram was a workplace. His face was part of his work. His personality was part of his work. He was building a career in public.
The last post on Sandhu’s account is a short lip-sync video, existing amongst makeup appointments, salon promotions, outfits, films, jokes, and years of work. He had Mumbai ahead of him, more work to do and another stage of his career waiting to begin. He was still building a life in public, still creating and still giving people something to look at. That is what makes his death so difficult to reduce to a headline about a shooting. A man who had spent years making a place for himself in public was killed while that life was still unfolding. The least we should be left with is the understanding that the violence around people like Sandhu does not exist in some separate corner of society. It exists with the work, the businesses, the videos, the plans, and the ordinary ambitions that make up a life.
