In the Indian state of Punjab, the presence of gangsters can be felt everywhere. Small-town hustlers smuggle liquor and extort businesses for cash, while criminal overlords run guns and drugs – and even control Punjab’s film and music industries. Yet one figure looms above them all.
Lawrence Bishnoi, who hails from a small village in Punjab, is now widely regarded as India’s most feared mob boss. And although he has been in prison for the past nine years, Bishnoi’s enterprise has grown from a small-time racket on a Punjabi university campus to a national – and even international – criminal network, which in recent years has been linked to some of the most high-profile killings in India and beyond.
The increasingly global footprint of the Bishnoi gang became apparent this week when Bishnoi’s name emerged at an explosive press conference held in Canada. Senior Canadian police officials alleged on Monday that Indian diplomats had been engaging in criminal activity on Canadian soil, including the harassment and targeted killing of Canadian Sikhs who were linked to a separatist movement. Among those believed to have been targeted was the Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was shot dead outside a gurdwara last June.
Brigitte Gauvin, a Canadian police assistant commissioner, accused Indian diplomats of using “organised crime elements” to carry out attacks on Canadian soil. She named the Bishnoi group, stating that investigators believed they were “connected to the agents of the government of India”.
It was late in 2023, just after Nijjar’s murder, that Bishnoi’s gang began to make its presence known in Canada – which has a huge Punjabi immigrant population – claiming credit for the shooting of a gangster, Sukhdool Singh, in Winnipeg. But the claims made by Canadian police this week were the first time the gang had been formally linked to the government of India.
“Lawrence Bishnoi now has a truly global gang behind him,” said Ritesh Lakhi, an independent journalist who has spent years reporting on gangs in Punjab and Canada. “Particularly North America, in the US and Canada, but also Europe, the Gulf – you name it, he has got his men all around the world.”
Bishnoi was not born into a life of criminality. His father was a former police officer and his family were relatively wealthy landowners. Bishnoi’s mother had grand aspirations for her son, naming him after a British army officer, and sent him to the local convent school as well as buying him the best clothes and shoes.
After school, he went to university to study law in the Punjab capital of Chandigarh. It was there that he began to immerse himself in the murky world of student politics, getting involved in violence, extortion and arson with other student leaders who all later became known gangsters. He dropped out of university and fell in and out of police custody.
It was in his first major spell in jail in Rajasthan, where he shared cells with some of the most prominent figures in north India’s criminal underworld, that he is said to have truly cemented his gangster credentials.
“Before he went to jail in Rajasthan, Bishnoi was never a big-time criminal,” Lakhi said. “It was his stints in prison that brought him into contact with gangsters and where he first built up his networks.”
Many believe that Bishnoi’s rise to prominence since then has been due to some level of state protection or powerful backer. He was been in jail since 2015 and is being held in Sabarmati prison in Gujarat. However, the prominence and scope of his criminal enterprise – which is now said to have upwards of 700 members – has continued to escalate, spreading from Punjab and Rajasthan to dominate across north India and now heading to southern states.
Everything from business extortion to targeted killings is said to be seamlessly orchestrated by Bishnoi from behind bars, through access to phones and encrypted messaging apps.
“Lawrence Bishnoi has been allowed to sit in jail and carry out crimes with impunity and that has led many to believe that the state is somehow on his side,” Lahki said. “It has made him much more formidable than others because there is an impression he has been protected. That makes him seem very powerful.”
Jupinderjit Singh, the author of Who Killed Moosewala?, said it suited Bishnoi to remain in jail and conduct his operations from behind bars, where he could increase the notoriety around his name but remain in relative safety.
“Gangsters like Bishnoi feel much safer in jail,” said Singh. “They can still carry out operations while maintaining all plausible deniability to police. The prominent gangsters who were walking free are the ones who have been shot dead by rivals or in police encounters.”
Over the past couple of years, the alleged actions of the Bishnoi group have become increasingly brazen, elevating his notoriety further. In 2022, Bishnoi was accused of being behind the high-profile murder of the Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moose Wala, which sent shock waves across India. Bishnoi has denied involvement in the killing.
Last weekend, a member of Bishnoi’s group claimed credit for the shooting of the prominent politician Baba Siddique on the streets of Mumbai, a crime that brought back memories of the city’s dark gangland past and led many to fear that Bishnoi’s next move would be to try to establish himself as the new leader of Mumbai’s violent criminal underworld. Bishnoi has also made a public pledge to kill one of Bollywood’s most famous stars, Salman Khan, and is accused of being behind multiple threats on his life.
Singh said it was clear that Bishnoi still had big ambitions to expand the reach and notoriety of his gang. “All that matters to him is that people fear him, as fear directly translates into money,” he said. However, he expressed doubts that Bishnoi would be able to stay alive for long, even with his alleged powerful backers.
“Gangsters like Lawrence Bishnoi live by the gun and die by the gun,” Singh said. “He might be powerful now but like so many others, he knows there’s probably a bullet waiting for him sooner or later.”
