“Two unidentified men fired at him around 6 pm,” said Sirivennela, Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police. Officials said the post claiming responsibility is being looked into as part of the probe.
“I ignored the negative comments and kept the positive ones in my mind… It doesn’t matter now. Mad Sandhu, who was around 30 years old, spoke publicly about his struggles in a conservative society several times before his death. I know how to live my life,” he said in a ‘Josh Talks’ motivational video in 2021.
Some teachers and children asked him what he was doing, while others praised him. “A lot of people would come and praise me, that how I being a boy danced like a beautiful girl… I still remember those days when my mom used to send me to school functions dressed up as a girl. She used to do my makeup so well. But he returned to Punjab after two years. And the old questions came back. He recalled, “Neighbours asked me, ‘What have you become? “I got a very positive response from them. “They asked me what I wanted to do in life. They gave me college and university recommendations for admission.
Though he did not speak much about his family specifically, he did speak about receiving his mother’s support as a child, when he was not sure why he “liked wearing clothes meant for girls, or preferred staying home to watch television, do makeup and read fashion magazines, when other boys were cycling and playing cricket”. At his school’s annual function once, he danced “like a girl”. She used to dress me up so well,” he said. After completing school in Amritsar, his family sent him to Delhi for higher studies, where he said he found acceptance for the first time. They told their kids not to be friends with me. “I was sitting in this conservative world, a world of depression,” he said. “But one day, my heart called out to me, and I spoke openly with my family,” he recalled in an interview two years ago. They understood me,” he said. I told them that I was interested in makeup and fashion. The negative comments did not stop, but he had learned to set them aside, he said. He addressed young viewers directly in one of his talks: “If I belong to a Jat Sikh family and live in a city like Amritsar, if I can achieve all these things, then you can do a lot.”
