By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: US federal prosecutors on Tuesday unsealed charges against the imprisoned leader of an Indian organized crime network and an associate they say served as his point man in North America, accusing the pair of orchestrating the 2023 murder of a Sikh separatist leader outside a temple in suburban Vancouver — a killing that had already thrown relations between Canada and India into turmoil.
The indictment, unveiled at a news conference in Los Angeles, names Lawrence Bishnoi, 33, who officials say has directed a sprawling criminal enterprise from behind bars in India, and Satinderjeet Singh, known also as “Goldy Brar,” as the men responsible for the shooting death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. Nijjar, 45, was gunned down on June 18, 2023, outside the Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, where he served as president.
According to the indictment, Bishnoi ran the operation using cellphones smuggled into his prison cell, and provided a co-conspirator with a photograph of Nijjar along with several of his addresses to carry out the killing. Singh, described in court documents as a childhood friend of Bishnoi’s, is accused of overseeing the group’s operations across North America. Bishnoi remains in custody in India; Singh has not been apprehended.
The charges arrived as part of a far larger law enforcement effort — a two-year, multi-country investigation that authorities said swept up 37 defendants connected to three India-based organized crime syndicates. Twenty-four of those defendants have been arrested or were already in custody, officials said. Seven fugitives are still being sought in the United States, two in India, and one in Europe.
“Transnational criminal gangs who spread fear, drugs, and violence will face the full force of justice and the weight of the federal government,” said Bill Essayli, First Assistant United States Attorney, who announced the charges alongside officials from the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Patrick Grandy, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said the three networks named in the indictments “have fueled violence, fear and instability within the East Indian communities throughout California and abroad.”
A killing that strained two governments
Nijjar’s assassination had already become a flashpoint in relations between Ottawa and New Delhi well before Tuesday’s charges. Months after the shooting, then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Parliament that Canadian intelligence services were pursuing “credible allegations” tying agents of the Indian government to the killing. New Delhi rejected the assertion outright, and the dispute prompted both countries to expel diplomats.
Notably, the indictment unsealed Tuesday does not allege any role for the Indian government in Nijjar’s death, and officials at the Los Angeles news conference were careful not to suggest one. Canadian authorities separately arrested and charged four Indian nationals in the case in May 2024, and have said they are examining whether those men had ties to India’s government; none of the alleged shooters are named as defendants in the US indictment, which refers to them only as co-conspirators.
Nijjar, born in India and a naturalized Canadian citizen, had for years campaigned for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland he and other separatists sought to carve from Indian territory. He was organizing an unofficial referendum on the question among the Sikh diaspora through the group Sikhs for Justice at the time of his death. Indian authorities had designated him a terrorist and had offered a reward for information leading to his arrest.
The tension over Sikh separatist activity is not new. Canada is home to the largest Sikh population outside India, and Indian officials have long accused Ottawa of tolerating what they describe as extremists operating on Canadian soil.
Since Tuesday’s announcement, relations between the two countries have shown signs of warming. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited India in February — his first official trip there — and opened talks on a trade agreement both sides hope to complete by November. That outreach has drawn criticism from some Sikh advocacy groups, who argue Carney’s government is failing to hold India accountable or protect Sikh Canadians from foreign interference.
A religious front for a criminal empire
Officials described Bishnoi, a native of Punjab, as someone who cultivated a public image as a devout “patriot” even as he ran an criminal organization spanning multiple continents. His group has been designated a terrorist entity in Canada. Behind that image, prosecutors say, Bishnoi personally directed assassinations, shootings, extortion schemes, kidnappings, drug trafficking, and human smuggling operations — using his public reputation to recruit members and associates in India, the United States, and beyond.
Two other criminal organizations were named in indictments unsealed the same day. One is led by Jaggu Bhagwanpuria, 38, also of Punjab, an imprisoned gangster who officials describe as a former Bishnoi associate turned rival. Bhagwanpuria’s group has grown to more than 1,000 members operating across the United States, Canada, Britain, continental Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. He and 16 co-defendants face charges including murder-for-hire, drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, and weapons trafficking.
The third network centers on an alleged narcotics pipeline. Ravinder Singh Dhanda, 57, of Vancouver, is among 11 defendants accused of running an operation that authorities say moved hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine each week from the United States into Canada.
Investigators said members of the syndicates also stole large quantities of narcotics from rival criminal organizations in California and resold the drugs across the country and into Canada. Some defendants, according to the indictments, cultivated relationships with corrupt officials in India to target rivals or people believed to be cooperating with law enforcement. One defendant is accused of directing criminal activity from inside a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility — though officials said Tuesday they have not determined how he managed to communicate without detection.
No attorney for Bishnoi was listed in court records as of Tuesday afternoon.
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