Gurugram: An hour before he was shot dead outside a gym in Shamli, Haryanvi singer Ankit Baliyan posted a video of himself on Instagram, singing from his car. The song was called: ‘Murder maar de sadak ke upar (commit murder on the road).’
Five days later, two of his alleged killers were themselves shot dead on a road, again in the industrial belt of Shamli in Uttar Pradesh. Sumit and Mohit, both residents of Sonipat district in Haryana, were killed in an encounter with the Shamli Police early on Monday. Later the same day, state police chief Rajeev Krishna announced a reward of Rs 2 lakh to the Shamli Police and Special Task Force for the “daring operation”.
According to the Uttar Pradesh Police, two policemen, Pradeep and Harvinder, were injured in the exchange of fire. Two other accused named in the case, Satyam and Aryan, are on the run.
Speaking about the Baliyan case, the UP Director General of Police (DGP) said: “A case was registered by the deceased’s father against four unidentified individuals. Given the gravity of the matter, multiple teams were constituted to solve the case.”
He added: “The police’s priority was clear: to identify and arrest the sharpshooters involved in the murder and to uncover the entire criminal conspiracy and gang network behind it… the accused involved in the incident were identified on 29 August based on human and technical intelligence; two of them, Mohit and Sumit, were killed in a police operation.”
For Ankit’s father Satbir Singh, a retired soldier, the killings brought partial relief and an unambiguous demand for more. “Half of the justice has been delivered,” he told reporters after the encounter. “Whether it is two or four, all of them should be killed. Only then will justice be complete.”
The police seems to be on the same page. “In this case, our objective is not merely to reach the shooter; we intend to bring the entire chain of conspirators—those who provided resources, supplied weapons, conducted reconnaissance, or sheltered the criminals—within the ambit of the law,” DGP Krishna said.
He added: “I wish to assure everyone that the Uttar Pradesh Police’s action does not end here. The role of every individual involved in the conspiracy behind this crime will be established, and strict legal action will be taken against them.”
A murder that shook the music scene
Ankit Baliyan, 32, was a Haryanvi singer and YouTuber known for songs built around gun culture and gangland bravado. One track, “Bhari court mein goli marenge (Will shoot in a crowded courtroom),” was released in February 2023, and banned after it generated controversy. The ban only added to Baliyan’s popularity.
Baliyan’s death was eerily like one of his songs: a rain of bullets outside a gym, five of them hitting him, including in the head and abdomen. He collapsed on the spot, a busy road right outside the gym he frequented.
Baliyan’s mother arrived to find him dead, and sat on the street cradling his body, a scene that drew crowds and briefly triggered a road blockade before senior police officers intervened.
The police say the killing was carried out by four shooters. A gang calling itself the Gogi Group claimed responsibility the same evening. A man identified on social media as Bholu Shahpuria, said to be linked to the gang, posted that Baliyan had sided with their enemies and paid the price for a song referencing an earlier attack on a gang member.
Separately, a singer-actor named Bhupendra Dhingra claimed in an Instagram video that a personal dispute with Baliyan at the gym led him to arrange the shooters, a claim the police have not yet confirmed.
Also Read: Ankit Baliyan sang of guns & gangs. ‘Moosewala-like’ killing leaves Shamli asking ‘why him?’
How the ‘encounter’ unfolded
Shamli Superintendent of Police (SP) Narendra Pratap Singh said police had mounted a district-wide checking operation through the night, deploying SWAT teams, surveillance units and station house officers after the murder.
Around 4 am on Monday, two men on a motorcycle were spotted heading toward Sonipat near the Madra Bridge. When Station House Officer Dharmendra Gautam’s team tried to stop them, the two allegedly opened fire, shattering the windscreen of a police vehicle.
The policemen returned fire. The SP said close to 20 rounds were exchanged before Sumit and Mohit were hit. Both were rushed to hospital, where doctors declared them dead on arrival. Police said the two had suffered more than 20 gunshot wounds combined. A weapon and other material were recovered from the spot, and a forensic team has since collected evidence.
Shamli SP Narendra Pratap Singh said, “During checking in the Kotwali Shamli area, our team tried to stop two suspicious individuals. Both opened fire on the police party. In retaliatory action taken in self-defence, the two accused sustained bullet injuries and were rushed to hospital, where doctors declared them dead on examination.”
The deceased, he said, were confirmed as Mohit and Sumit, both involved in the Ankit Balyan murder case and both carrying a reward of Rs 50,000 each.
Mohit, 22, son of the late Mahesh, was a resident of House No. 183, Baiyapur Khurd, under Sadar Police Station in Sonipat, with roots in village Jatwada in the same district. Sumit, 24, son of Dharampal, lived at Flat No. 1420, Housing Board Colony, G-Block, KDI, Kundli, and hailed originally from village Kakrauli, also under Sadar Police Station, Sonipat.
Police say the two fled toward Loni via Baghpat after the murder before attempting to double back through Sonipat, and that surveillance footage from the crime scene helped investigators trace their movement.
Not everyone was convinced. Samajwadi Party Member of Parliament Awadhesh Prasad told reporters in Ayodhya that the circumstances of the encounter needed scrutiny, and called for a high-level inquiry into how it had unfolded.
Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Ajay Rai went further, telling reporters that law and order had collapsed in the state despite a string of past encounters, and that the government was patting itself on the back for operations of this kind even as such killings continued. He accused the BJP government of shielding organised crime while projecting toughness through such encounters.
A father’s ultimatum
A day after his son’s murder, Satbir Singh told reporters he had met the Shamli SP, with the district magistrate also present, and had put forward a blunt proposition.
He invoked Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s own line on encounters—that a man who commits murder at one crossroads will not be allowed to cross the next, and that bulldozers will follow. Ankit’s killers, he said, had crossed several crossroads already, and the promise had not held. He gave the administration four days. If nothing had happened by then, he said, the family would withdraw the FIR and “look after it” themselves.
Later, in a Jat Panchayat which was also attended by Satbir Singh, a speaker was heard telling the gathering that they don’t want anything else except the “encounter” of the four who killed Baliyan.
That four-day clock was still running when, a day before Monday’s encounter, Satbir said the SP and district magistrate had met him again, this time asking for more time. He agreed to wait. Hours later, Sumit and Mohit were dead.
A public relations officer in the Shamli SP’s office who answered the SP’s official mobile phone said that Baliyan’s family had been demanding an encounter of all four accused, but said Monday’s operation was unconnected to that demand and was the outcome of the standard manhunt launched after the murder.
The bigger picture
Encounters framed as public deliverance have become a familiar feature of Haryana’s crime landscape in recent years — a pattern ThePrint has tracked in cases where grieving families openly call for the police to bypass trial in a story.
The Monday encounter has shown the same being repeated in the neighbouring Western Uttar Pradesh, as Ankit Baliyan’s case fits that arc closely: a victim whose own songs romanticised gun violence, a family demanding retributive killings within days, and a state police force delivering two of the four names on cue.
With Satyam and Aryan still at large, and Baliyan’s father keeping the clock running on his own terms, the case is far from over.
What began as a gangland shooting outside a Shamli gym has become a test of how far public pressure can shape, or replace, the due process of law.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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