Makeup Artist Mad Sandhu Shot Dead in Amritsar; Police Investigate

On the evening of October 3, around 6 p.m., two men on a motorcycle pulled up to a car-washing centre on Loharka Road in Amritsar and opened fire. The target was Madhusudan Sandhu, a 2.2 lakh-follower makeup artist and content creator known across Instagram, YouTube, and Punjabi podcasts simply as Mad Sandhu. He was struck multiple times and died en route to a private hospital. Police arrived at the scene, examined it, and began the work of investigation—but the motive remained unknown.

Sandhu had built a distinctive presence online over years of deliberate work. He started not as an influencer but as a stylist and assistant costume designer, working on projects across Punjab and Mumbai before pivoting to makeup, modelling, and acting. He founded Mane Lane Unisex Salon in Amritsar and became known for content that moved fluidly between beauty tutorials, fashion advice, lifestyle vlogs, comedy, and personal reflection. His Instagram feed held makeup looks alongside everyday moments. He appeared on podcasts to discuss the film industry, gender, and his own experiences. He even acted—he had a role in the Punjabi film Oye Bhole Oye. The work was varied and intentional, and it found an audience.

What made Sandhu's presence distinctive, though, was not just the range of his content but his willingness to speak openly about himself. In a 2021 appearance on Josh Talks, he discussed growing up feeling different from the boys around him, more drawn to makeup, clothes, and fashion than to what was expected. He remembered his mother's support—how she would dress him for school functions, do his makeup carefully, even as people questioned why she would do such a thing. Those early moments of acceptance at home stood against the mockery and judgment he faced outside it. Neighbours asked what he had become. They told their children not to befriend him. Even after moving to Delhi, where he found greater acceptance, the questioning followed him home.

Over time, Sandhu chose not to hide. He was openly gay and spoke regularly about identity, gender, and acceptance. That openness became central to his public image, but it also meant regular exposure to online trolling—comments about his appearance, his clothes, his content. He continued anyway. In that same Josh Talks conversation, he spoke about learning to filter the noise, to keep the positive comments and discard the rest. "I ignored the negative comments and kept the positive ones in my mind," he said. "It doesn't matter now. I know how to live my life." In podcast appearances, he showed a more assertive side too—when asked about personal relationships in one conversation, he declined to answer and walked out rather than engage with a question he felt crossed a line.

The investigation into his death has begun. Police have deployed multiple teams to examine CCTV footage from the car-washing centre and canvas the area for witnesses. They are searching for the two unidentified men on the motorcycle. No motive has been established. A video of Sandhu injured on the road circulated online after the shooting, a final image that contradicted the careful self-presentation he had maintained across years of content creation. The Commissionerate Police Amritsar confirmed in a social media post that one person had lost his life in the incident and that efforts were underway to apprehend the accused. What remains unclear is why someone decided that evening to end the life of a man who had spent years learning to live it openly.