Kanchan Kumari was killed for giving men what they want. And that’s the real obscenity

Kanchan Kumari’s murder represents the lethal endpoint of India’s broader moral policing epidemic. It extends far beyond religious vigilantism into systematic cultural control.

Amritpal Singh Mehron, Punjabi influencer Kanchan Kumari (Kamal Kaur Bhabhi) | Source: X

Less than a week ago, Punjabi influencer Kanchan Kumari was posting innocuous videos of herself to Instagram, driving through Ludhiana with a brood of young nephews and nieces, taking selfies and pouting at the camera. The excited little group are singing off-key Bollywood songs, shooting the breeze, stopping to refuel the car – the mundane rhythms of “A Day in My Life” templates that are the hallmark of so many Instagram reels. There isn’t a trace of fear in Kumari’s body language, and the death threats that she was apparently receiving appear to be a distant memory.

Three days later, Kumari’s decomposing body was recovered from the same car in the parking lot of Adesh Hospital in Bathinda, two hours away. The 30-year-old had been strangled to death by the men who made good on their threats.

The woman Punjab knew by the suggestive moniker “Kamal Kaur Bhabhi” commanded an empire of attention: 4.2 lakh Instagram followers, 2.3 lakh YouTube subscribers, and 7.7 lakh followers on Facebook. She often posted about wanting a suitable groom, made risqué content, and used off-colour language while building an audience hungry for what she offered. Nearly 15 lakh people across platforms consumed Kumari’s work. Fifteen lakh people – overwhelmingly men – who enthusiastically liked, shared, and subscribed to her content.

Only Kumari paid with her life.

The burden of ‘honour’

This is the perverse logic of moral policing: Millions of men consume what society deems unacceptable and corrupting, but it’s only women who bear the consequences. In this very convenient system, creators are punished, while consumers are absolved. Women become solely accountable for content that exists because men demand it, carrying the burden of male desire on one shoulder and society’s honour on the other. Men, in the meantime, escape all scrutiny and responsibility.

The mastermind of Kumari’s murder also did not bother with these contradictions. Amritpal Singh Mehron, a 30-year-old bike mechanic from Moga and a self-styled radical leader, heads a vigilante group called “Qaum De Rakhe”, or Protectors of the Community. Mehron aligns himself with the Nihang order, comprising Sikh warriors characterised by blue robes and elaborate turbans who once defended their community against oppression.

Mehron contested the 2022 Punjab Assembly elections and managed only 6,363 votes. He lost his security deposit, but has since found his true calling in moral policing, reportedly amassing an Instagram following of nearly 7.5 lakh for his screeds against obscenity.

Mehron orchestrated the murder through two accomplices, Jaspreet Singh and Nimratjit Singh, who lured Kumari from Ludhiana to Bathinda under the pretence of a car promotion event before strangling her to death. In a video posted after Kumari’s killing, Mehron declared with theatrical bravado, “They [the accused arrested] don’t care for the consequences and neither do I. You can hang me, send me to jail for life… but as long as I am alive, I will not allow obscenity and vulgarity to be spread in Punjab.” Yet, within hours of a lookout notice being issued against him, this protector of the community bravely fled to the UAE.

Unsurprisingly, the murder has unleashed a campaign of terror across Punjab’s content creator community. Amritsar influencer Deepika Luthra immediately deleted her videos, issued public apologies, and sought police protection after Mehron’s explicit warning. Preet Jatti, who has more than five lakh followers on Instagram, was threatened for posting astrology content and now fears for her five-month-old child’s safety. In the same video, Mehron warns: “Just because some people want to earn money from Instagram and YouTube does not mean it’s a free for all…It’s not necessary that dead bodies would always be found or that there is only one parking spot in Bathinda.”

Even in the face of this crime, responses are divided, revealing a schism through Punjab’s moral fabric. Plenty of voices have called on the Punjab government to find and bring Mehron to justice. Singer Mika Singh challenged Mehron directly: “There are many gangsters, many terrible people roaming around Punjab, why don’t you go after those guys? Nihangs were meant to help the vulnerable and the defenceless.”

Nihang leader Harjeet Singh Rasulpur excoriated Mehron in a video: “Who do you think you are? A blackmailer? You’ve only threatened people your entire life. As Sikhs, we have no right to cast aspersions on anyone’s character, or judge what a young woman says, wears, behaves, or whether she ‘exposes’ herself.” He questioned who Mehron’s actions truly serve — “only people who wish to break Punjab.”

But these voices of sanity are drowned by an equally vocal majority celebrating the murder as moral cleansing. Multiple influencers publicly justified the killing, calling it necessary to “clean this trash” and protect children from corruption. The head of the Akal Takht Sahib, Giani Malkit Singh, is one of them. Singh stated that Mehron had taken the right step and took exception to Kumari’s appropriation of “Kaur”. “Those who defame religions by spreading vulgarity under false identities must be stopped,” he said. “Such actions are against the principles of our faith.” Others pledged legal support for Mehron, who might soon be on a path to transform into a folk hero.

Exposing double standards

Navkiran Singh, a human rights advocate based in Punjab, told me that he didn’t condone the killing, but that creators like Kumari were beyond the pale. “Why doesn’t the government have an agency to monitor creators like this?” he said. “In society, there are people who can stand vulgar messages, but some cannot. Why should somebody have an excuse to take the law into their own hands? This should serve as a turning point – you can’t make content like this so easily accessible.”

According to Canada-based journalist Gagandeep Singh, Mehron has been attempting to become an “activist” for years. He, along with others, was booked in 2020 for allegedly vandalising statues of folk dancers at the heritage street near the Golden Temple in Amritsar. He has a history of threatening Instagram influencers like Deepika Luthra and others. In the interim, he has also intervened in domestic disputes. “Punjab has always had a vacuum of solid leadership, so from time to time, a lot of people have tried to fill this,” Singh told me. “Actor Deep Sidhu also tried, and later MP Amritpal Singh — and now Mehron is also trying to fit into that space,” he said.

Singh also pointed out that this issue is not limited to Punjab — many Instagram influencers, including women, have moved abroad and often turn to social media to eke out a living. Take the case of Canada-based influencer Surleen Official, who has over six lakh Instagram followers. Two days ago, likely responding to people comparing her to Kumari, she said in a video that her “obscene” content gets so many more views: “Please don’t ask me to be ‘good’. I have tried it, and I get a few thousand views, but my supposedly dirty videos get millions of views. If anyone has to change, it is this mentality. I’ll stop making such videos when you stop watching them.”

“Many men make similar double-meaning or obscene videos,” Singh said. “Take Randhir Maan, whose videos are filled with abuses, but no one seems to have said anything against him.” Maan, who claims to be a pilot in the United States, has lakhs of followers across YouTube and Instagram, who laugh along with his tirades that have clearly been filmed drunk.

Kumari’s murder represents the lethal endpoint of India’s broader moral policing epidemic. It extends far beyond religious vigilantism into systematic cultural control. Everyone, from Amar Singh Chamkila to comedians Ranveer Allahbadia and Samay Raina, falls on this spectrum. Our obscenity laws, largely unchanged since the 1860s, inevitably favour the loudest, most violent voices.

The most insidious justification for Kumari’s murder hinges on “protecting the youth” from corrupting influences. This patronising narrative treats young people as empty-minded vessels just ready to transform into moral degenerates. But if our youth lacks basic discernment – people who are prone to violence and indecency – then our problem isn’t content regulation. It is understanding what kind of failed society produces such malleable, agency-free young people. By outsourcing moral responsibility to content creators, rather than teaching our young critical thinking, society demands that women become, in addition to everything else, unpaid guardians of public morality.

Kanchan Kumari’s content might have been vulgar, but the real obscenity is a country that murders women for serving an audience it refuses to acknowledge. And until that changes, Mehron’s threat of “parking lots” in every city is a promise just waiting to be fulfilled.

Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.

(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)