US charges jailed Indian gang boss with ordering Sikh activist’s assassination in Canada

WASHINGTON (MNTV) — Federal prosecutors have accused Lawrence Bishnoi, one of India’s most notorious imprisoned crime bosses, of running a multi-continent criminal empire from his cell and personally ordering the 2023 assassination of a Sikh leader in British Columbia — a killing that detonated a diplomatic crisis between Ottawa and New Delhi.

The charges emerged Tuesday, July 7, when the Justice Department unsealed three grand jury indictments naming 37 defendants tied to three India-based transnational crime groups.

Twenty-four people have been arrested — 11 in California, one in Indiana, one in Georgia, three in Canada and one in Spain — with seven more already in custody on other matters.

Ten remain at large: seven believed to be in the United States, two in India and one in Europe.

The takedown, codenamed Operation Hard Ball, caps a years-long federal investigation. Agents seized roughly 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, a kilogram of heroin, about $40,000 in cash and a dozen firearms, executing 23 search warrants around Sacramento and 11 in the Los Angeles area.

Killing at Sikh worship place

The most consequential allegation sits in the first indictment, filed July 1: that Bishnoi and his alleged North American deputy Satinderjeet Singh — better known as Goldy Brar — ordered the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar on June 18, 2023, outside his gurdwara, Sikh worship place, in Surrey, B.C.

Bishnoi’s suspected role has been reported before, but this marks the first time it has been set down in formal charges.

Court papers identify Nijjar only by the initials “H.S.N.,” describing him as a prominent political and religious figure from Punjab who was living in Canada when two gunmen shot him as he left the temple.

Prosecutors allege Bishnoi supplied four unnamed co-conspirators with a photograph of Nijjar and several addresses to make the killing possible.

According to the indictment, two other unidentified co-conspirators fired the shots, while Bishnoi claimed the act publicly.

Syndicate run on smuggled phones

Prosecutors describe a striking gap between Bishnoi’s public and private lives.

Now 33, the former student politician cultivated an image online and in interviews as a patriot, nationalist and devout believer — a persona the government says he used as a recruiting tool.

Privately, using contraband cellphones and VoIP devices smuggled into his cell, he allegedly directed political killings, shootings, extortions, kidnappings, drug trafficking and human smuggling on multiple continents.

Indian reporting places him in Sabarmati Central Jail in Gujarat, and the indictment describes a network that recruits minors from Punjab using student visas and forged documents.

Day-to-day control was delegated to lieutenants: Brar, 32, ran North America; Rohit Godara, 37, of Rajasthan, ran Europe; Sukhraj Singh Kang, 58, is also named. Both Brar and Godara are said to have spoken in Bishnoi’s name.

Targets were identified through government databases, social media and physical surveillance, with members compiling “pattern-of-life” intelligence and family details to intensify pressure during extortion attempts.

The gang advertised its own violence to manufacture fear it could monetize.

After a November 2023 shooting at the Vancouver home of a well-known Indian actor and singer, Bishnoi claimed responsibility on Facebook and wrote in Punjabi: “no one can save you from us.”

Alleged extortion victims include a Brampton businessman, a Surrey immigration consultant, a British trucking company owner and a California resident — each told to pay anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of dollars.

In December 2025 and January 2026, prosecutors say, defendants demanded $5 million from a victim in Thousand Oaks.

The enterprise allegedly financed itself by trafficking drugs and robbing rivals of theirs — including 49 kilograms of cocaine intercepted in Redlands in November 2024 and roughly 520 kilograms stolen from rival traffickers around Los Angeles between March 2024 and July 2025.

Bishnoi, Brar, Godara and six others face racketeering conspiracy, Hobbs Act extortion conspiracy, six counts of attempted extortion, and a narcotics conspiracy count.

Two more networks

A second indictment charges 17 defendants linked to Jaggu Bhagwanpuria, 38 — an ex-associate turned rival of Bishnoi, also jailed in India — with murder-for-hire, kidnapping, extortion and weapons trafficking.

That group claims more than 1,000 members worldwide and over 100 in the United States. Most damningly, prosecutors allege it corrupted Indian police and officials, feeding them false information to trigger baseless criminal cases against rivals and suspected informants.

In one instance, a Stockton member allegedly handed a victim’s name to a corrupt Punjab officer, resulting in the victim, his father and his sister being falsely accused of a January 2026 murder — after which the officer extorted them.

Another member, held in ICE custody, is accused of threatening to put bullets in an Ohio family’s children.

The third indictment names Ravinder Singh Dhanda, 57, of Vancouver — who used the aliases “Randy,” “Rolex” and “John Wick” — and ten others, alleging they smuggled hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine weekly from the U.S. into Canada aboard long-haul semi-trucks and, at times, farm trucks.

The diplomatic subtext

The indictment’s silences may matter as much as its allegations.

Nijjar’s death triggered a diplomatic rupture after then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canadian intelligence linked agents of the Indian government to the killing — a claim New Delhi has consistently rejected.

The U.S. indictment says nothing about Indian state involvement. RCMP Deputy Commissioner Lisa Moreland said investigators found no evidence Indian officials took part in any of the crimes covered by Operation Hard Ball, and confirmed that the Indian government cooperated with the investigation.

Indian officials have seized on this, arguing the operation vindicates New Delhi’s long-standing position that Nijjar’s death was a product of gang rivalry rather than state action, and that relations with Ottawa — improved since Mark Carney replaced Trudeau — should now stabilise.

Sikh organisations see it differently. Groups including the Sikh Federation reiterated their belief in Indian state involvement and pressed Canada for transparency, arguing the public deserves to know whether investigators identified links to foreign state actors.

A recently disclosed RCMP briefing, obtained under access-to-information law, indicates that in 2024 the Mounties suspected the Indian government in the murders of at least two Sikh dissident activists in Canada and in plots against three others.

The parallel New York case complicates the picture further: shortly after Nijjar’s murder, a plot to kill Sikh activist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun was thwarted by the FBI, and in February an Indian national, Nikhil Gupta, pleaded guilty to conspiring with former Indian official Vikash Yadav, who remains at large.

Pannun responded to Tuesday’s charges by saying accountability cannot end with jailed gangsters, triggermen or intermediaries.

What comes next

Washington intends to seek Bishnoi’s extradition from India under RICO, with Moreland framing the goal as severing his ability to command the network from prison.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli was blunter, saying of the jailed bosses: “he won’t be extorting any more victims once he’s in our custody,” and adding that defendants would be held in maximum or supermax facilities without comparable communications access.

He expressed hope Bhagwanpuria would arrive within weeks. Brar, meanwhile, remains a fugitive believed to be in the U.S.

Extradition would proceed under the 1997 India-U.S. treaty and India’s Extradition Act of 1962 — a magistrate conducts a threshold inquiry, not a trial, before the Union government makes the final call, with appeals available to the high court and Supreme Court.

Notably, Indian citizenship is not itself a bar to surrender.

Canada designated the Bishnoi enterprise a terrorist entity in September 2025.

All defendants are presumed innocent; many face mandatory minimums of ten years to life if convicted.

For the communities living under this shadow, celebration is premature. Hours before the arrests were announced, another Surrey home was shot at in an extortion-linked attack — a reminder that the indictments have removed names from a chart, not yet fear from a neighbourhood.