the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar<\/a>, the president of a Surrey Sikh temple, in 2023.<\/p>\nThe two Surrey events are among a wealth of information in a recently released U.S. grand jury indictment of Bishnoi, Brar and nine others.<\/p>\n
The Bishnoi Gang is a transnational criminal organization that operates out of India. In September 2025, the Government of Canada listed the Bishnoi Gang as a terrorist entity.<\/p>\n
The gang is known to \u201chave a presence in Canada and are active in areas with significant diaspora communities. The Bishnoi Gang engages in murder, shootings and arson, and generates terror through extortion and intimidation,\u201d noted a September 2025 press release from Public Safety Canada.<\/p>\n
The founder of the group, Lawrence Bishnoi, has been in prison in India for over a decade but is allegedly known to still order kidnappings, political assassinations, murders, shootings and extortions from his jail cell.<\/p>\n
The indictment alleges that the Bishnoi gang often recruited members from impoverished areas of Punjab, India. The minors are often promised money, notoriety and protection.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Bishnoi OCG targeted minors for recruitment to minimize the sentencing exposure that otherwise would attach to violent criminal activity committed by members and associates of the enterprise,\u201d reads the indictment.<\/p>\n
Loyal members of the group were sent outside of India, including Canada and the United States, on student visas and foreign worker visas to help the group\u2019s criminal operations in that country.<\/p>\n
BISHNOI\u2019S HISTORY<\/p>\n
The indictment briefly describes how Bishnoi enrolled at a Panjab university in India in early 2010, was described as a student leader, and, during that time, \u201cdeveloped a network of associates and followers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Soon after, he \u201ctraded campus politics for criminal activity, and refashioned his associates and followers into a criminal organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bishnoi projects himself as a patriot, nationalist and a very religious person, reads the indictment.<\/p>\n
He was arrested in 2015 in India and has been incarcerated ever since, but the Bishnoi group has grown into a \u201ctransnational criminal syndicate\u201d with thousands of members around the world, including hundreds in Canada and the United States.<\/p>\n
He has been known to \u201cdirect and coordinate acts of violence\u201d in Canada and the United States from his prison cell. This includes, but is not limited to, having members of the group carry out targeted killings, shootings, kidnappings, maimings and assaults.<\/p>\n
LIEUTENANTS AND REGIONAL LEADERS<\/p>\n
\u201cTo help manage the day-to-day operations of the Bishnoi organized crime group, Bishnoi delegated control to trusted lieutenants and regional leaders of the enterprise,\u201d reads the indictment.<\/p>\n
Bishnoi made Brar, his childhood friend, the head of North American operations. His other two lieutenants are Rohit Godara, 37, of Rajasthan, India, the European leader of the Bishnoi enterprise; and Sukhraj Singh Kang, 58, of Punjab, India.<\/p>\n
The group is known to engage in \u201cviolent criminal activity\u201d in every country where they operate, the indictment states, and uses violence to create a \u201cculture of fear\u201d in India and Indian diaspora communities around the world.<\/p>\n
The group is known to traffic and steal controlled substances, to extort victims to generate income for the Bishnoi group, take murder-for-hire contracts and commit other crimes.<\/p>\n
With help from Bishnoi members on the ground, the group identifies people to extort, especially focusing on ones that, by being targeted, \u201cwould enhance the Bishnoi\u2019s reputation for extreme violence and maximize the likely success of future extortion schemes.\u201d<\/p>\n
The victims would often be targeted using encrypted messaging applications and demand payments and be threatened with physical violence to themselves or their family. They were often promised protection if they did pay.<\/p>\n
Brar (also known as Satinderjeet Singh Brar, Satinder Jeet, and Satinder Jit Singh Brar) was added to the FBI\u2019s Most Wanted list in July 2026. A warrant was issued for his arrest on July 1 in the United States District Court in the Central District of California. He is charged with racketeer-influenced and corrupt organizations conspiracy; conspiracy to interfere and attempted interference with commerce by extortion; and conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute controlled substances.<\/p>\n
The indictment also includes Bishnoi and Brar claiming responsibility for shooting at the West Vancouver home of Indian actor and singer, who is only identified as R.G. in the indictment, in November 2023. An online post by Bishnoi, in which he claimed responsibility, stated that \u201cno one can save you from us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brar attempted to contact the actor several times years later between December 2025 and March 2026 and left voice messages on his and his manager\u2019s phones, in which he claimed responsibility for the shooting and demanded money.<\/p>\n
He continued to call and leave messages on both numbers, stating, \u201cYou can ignore my message; you will not be able to ignore the bullets coming your way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two other grand jury indictments connected<\/a> to two other Indian-based transnational organized crime groups were also recently released.<\/p>\nThe investigation, called \u201cOperation Hard Ball,\u201d has led to 24 arrests of individuals connected to three Indian-based transnational organized crime groups: Lawrence Bishnoi, Ravinder Dhanda and Jaggu Bhagwanpuria. Law enforcement is looking for 10 fugitives, seven in the U.S., two in India, and one in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025 extortion of the director of an immigration consultancy in Surrey is one of the alleged violent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194299],"tags":[49,48,87674],"class_list":["post-790916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-surrey","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}