Indian Bishnoi gang leaders charged in connection with 2023 assassination of Sikh separatist in Canada

The U.S. Department of Justice said two leaders of India’s Bishnoi gang have been charged in connection with the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a major development in a suspected political assassination that badly ruptured Canada-India relations.

In a newly unsealed indictment, U.S. authorities charged Lawrence Bishnoi, the head of the Bishnoi gang who is currently imprisoned in India, for his alleged involvement in the murder. Nijjar was gunned down in June 2023 in the parking lot of his Surrey, B.C., temple. Satinderjeet Singh, a top Canada-based lieutenant for the Bishnoi gang known as Goldy Brar, is also named in the indictment for his alleged role in the killing.

The charges mark a significant escalation in the earlier allegations that Canada had levelled against the Indian government, asserting after the assassination that top Indian officials had ordered Nijjar’s killing.

Tuesday’s indictments do not connect the killing to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, but clarify the Bishnoi gang’s alleged role in the murder, which was also earlier alleged by Canadian authorities. Ottawa officially designated the Bishnoi gang, a Indian crime syndicate with a growing network in Canada, as a terrorist entity in September 2025.

The new allegations come to light as Canadian, U.S. and European authorities said they had arrested 24 suspects in connection with three separate Indian crime groups on Tuesday. The charges come as part of a widening crackdown on a transnational crime wave behind a ripple of murders, arsons and extortions that have become increasingly common in some Canadian cities.

Three of the 24 suspects were arrested in Canada, according to statements issued by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Canadian and U.S. authorities allege that many of the suspects are known associates of the Bishnoi gang, which operates a growing network focused around cities and suburbs in greater Vancouver, Toronto and Edmonton.

In addition, another 13 suspects were arrested in the U.S. and one in Spain. Seven suspects had already been in custody before police publicized the arrests.

U.S. authorities unsealed a total of three indictments against 37 suspects, including three major crime ring bosses based in India. Bishnoi is one, and the other two — Ravinder Dhanda and Jaggu Bhagwanpuria — are also known Indian drug and crime kingpins.

As part of the joint operation, police say they are also looking for 10 fugitives currently at large in the U.S., India and Europe, according to the DOJ statement.

Neither the Department of Justice nor the RCMP directly named the Canadian suspects in its press releases. The RCMP said it arrested three suspects in Surrey, West Vancouver and White Rock, B.C., and will now apply to have the trio extradited to the U.S.

“Together, we disrupted the operations of organized criminals who used murder, cruelty and fear to extort and control people in both Canada and the United States,” RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme said in a statement.

“Today’s coordinated operation strikes at the heart of three brutal transnational organizations that have terrorized families, exploited communities, and stolen lives through ruthless acts of violence in the U.S. and abroad,” said Patrick Grandy, assistant director in the FBI’s Los Angeles office.

Canadian authorities have long asserted that the Bishnoi gang was the group that carried out the political assassination of Nijjar on behalf of Modi’s Hindu nationalist government. However, those assertions — including from former prime minister Justin Trudeau — never led to formal charges.

The Indian government has worked to repress the Sikh separatist movement, which has for decades sought to establish an autonomous state of Khalistan in northern India’s Punjabi region. While Sikh separatism has died down since its peak in the 1980s, the Indian government continues to suppress those sentiments in its various diaspora communities.

Canada has the second-largest population of Sikhs in the world outside of India, making it a prime battleground for such repression efforts.

The Bishnoi gang is also allegedly connected to a string of extortions, particularly in Surrey, B.C., and Brampton, Ont., targeting Sikhs and other South Asians living in Canada.

Under such schemes, the Bishnoi gang and other enterprises demand payment from select diaspora small business owners in the form of cash, crypto or money transfers, according to a report by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC). Gang members then threaten those families or business owners who don’t pay, often by shooting at their homes and setting their vehicles on fire, according to police reports and court hearings later reported by media.

As part of the joint arrests unveiled on Tuesday — called “Operation Hard Ball,” according to U.S. authorities — police forces seized 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, US$40,000 in cash and a dozen firearms.

Bishnoi has been imprisoned in India since 2015, but authorities allege he continues to run his crime syndicate from behind bars. In its press release, the Department of Justice said Bishnoi operates the gang using “contraband cellphones and other voice-over internet protocol devices smuggled into his jail cell.”

Bishnoi “personally directed political assassinations, murders, shootings, extortions, kidnappings, drug trafficking, human smuggling, and other crimes committed by members and associates of the Bishnoi enterprise worldwide,” the statement said.

In May 2024, the RCMP named four suspects — all of them in their 20s — that it had arrested in connection with the Nijjar killing. Amandeep Singh, Karanpreet Singh, Kamalpreet Singh and Karan Brar are currently awaiting trial.

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