Ankit Baliyan was 35 years old and had a phrase linked to his name: ‘Murder maar de sadak ke upar’, kill him on the road. He sang it in an Instagram reel, smiling, as part of his song ‘Baby Badmash’.
Hours later, he was leaving a gym in the Kotwali area of Shamli, in northern India, when four men on two motorcycles shot him. It was August 26, 2026, at around 6:45 in the evening. Baliyan died shortly afterward at a community health center.
His YouTube channel had more than 368.000 subscribers, almost always featuring songs about guns and rivalries that garnered millions of views. Police are reviewing security cameras and his social media activity in search of a motive that has still not been confirmed. His wife Jyoti, a teacher in Delhi, and his father Satvir Singh, a retired soldier, await answers while protests demanding the attackers’ capture take place in Shamli.
