Celebrated sports journalist and author Sundeep Misra on Monday launched his fifth book, \u2018Gunned Down – Murder of an Olympic Champion\u2019, which traces the extraordinary life and unsolved murder of Indian hockey great Prithipal Singh.<\/p>\n
![\"(From](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/-From-left--Senior-journalist-Arup-Ghosh--former-h_1755029614125.jpg\" "\\"(From")
(From left) Senior journalist Arup Ghosh, former hockey team Dilip Tirkey, author Sundeep Misra, former India hockey captain and MLA Pargat Singh and Olympic gold medallist Harbinder Singh at Hotel Taj in Chandigarh on Tuesday. (Keshav Singh\/HT) <\/p>\n
Prithipal, known as the \u201cPenalty King\u201d and one of world\u2019s most-feared penalty corner specialists, was part of India\u2019s Olympic medal haul with a silver in 1960, gold in 1964 and bronze in 1968. He was the first hockey player to receive the Arjuna Award and later served as the chairman of selectors when India won the 1975 Hockey World Cup.<\/p>\n
His life ended tragically in 1983 when he was shot dead by his own students at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, while he was working as dean, students\u2019 welfare at the institution.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the launch, Misra recalled how his father first introduced him to Prithipal\u2019s hockey feats in the late 1970s. \u201cA sense of duality that resonated personally with me was that he was a superstar at the same time, extremely humble,\u201d said Misra.<\/p>\n
A panel discussion was also held during the launch, moderated by senior journalist Arup Ghosh, and featuring Olympic gold medallist Harbinder Singh, former India hockey captain and MLA Pargat Singh, political ideologue Harcharan Singh Bains and retired professor Ajaib Singh Tiwana. Two other former captains of the Indian Men\u2019s hockey team \u2013 Dileep Tirkey and Sardar Singh were also in attendance.<\/p>\n
Pargat lauded Prithipal\u2019s \u201cphenomenal commitment to the game\u201d and lamented the compromised murder investigation, while Bains remembered him as \u201can iconic elder brother for girls on campus\u201d and a feared disciplinarian.<\/p>\n
The author revealed that completing the book took nearly six years due to the lack of accessible resources on the legend. \u201cThere are no feature or report pieces that look at Prithipal more as a person than a player,\u201d he said, comparing the dearth of material to the extensive literature on his personal favourite, George Foreman. Misra also shared that he is already halfway through his next \u201cmurder-sports\u201d book, a work of fiction.<\/p>\n
Present on the occasion, Hockey India president and former India captain, Tirkey said this about the book, \u201cI only came to know about Prithipal\u2019s feats in 1983 when he died. That was a time when there was less information on hockey players. Salute to the author for writing about his life and also delving into the unsolved mystery of his death.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Celebrated sports journalist and author Sundeep Misra on Monday launched his fifth book, \u2018Gunned Down – Murder of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[33668,33666,33664,457,33667,33663,96,33665,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-63250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-and-author-sundeep-misra","tag-and-killing-of-india-penalty-king","tag-book-explores","tag-books","tag-celebrated-sports-journalist","tag-chandigarh","tag-entertainment","tag-olympic-glory","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}