In 2011, law graduate Lawrence Bishnoi was eyeing a career in politics when he had his first brush with crime. Over the next few years, he would emerge as one of the most feared gangsters in India.

Bishnoi has been in jail since 2014 but the cycle of violence and retribution the gangster has unleashed with impunity has triggered withering questions on why the security agencies have failed to fathom how he runs his crime network.

Bishnoi has been in Sabarmati jail in BJP-ruled Gujarat for over a year now after being shifted out of Tihar. What has added to the intrigue is the Union home ministry invoking an order that bars the movement of prisoners to keep Bishnoi in Sabarmati jail. That order has now been extended by a year in Bishnoi’s case.

‘Hindu don’

Sources in the NIA said the 31-year-old identified himself as a “Hindu don” — a warrior for the “Hindu cause”, which he believes offers him a degree of protection in the current regime.

The NIA chargesheeted Bishnoi under the stringent anti-terror law UAPA.

“He compares his gang to Dawood Ibrahim’s D-Company,” said an NIA official. “Much like his idol Dawood who established his network in the 90s by starting with petty crimes and later transitioning to drug trafficking, targeted killings and extortion, Bishnoi’s modus operandi is similar,” the official said. “But what sets him apart is that he operates from behind bars while Dawood fled the country.”

The Bishnoi gang’s name has cropped up in connection with the murder of Maharashtra politician and former minister Baba Siddiqui last week.

With over two dozen criminal cases against him, including murder, extortion and arms smuggling, Bishnoi is said to be the leader of a 700-member gang that operates mostly in north India, especially in Punjab, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan. The gang has international connections as well, especially in Canada, sources said.

On Monday, India and Canada expelled six of each other’s diplomats in tit-for-tat moves after Ottawa accused Indian government agents of links to the 2023 murder of a Sikh separatist leader near Vancouver. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which is investigating the case, has accused Indian government agents of being linked to an organised crime syndicate called the “Bishnoi group”.

Bishnoi has allegedly executed the murders of many high-profile people, including Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala in 2022 and Karni Sena chief Sukhdev Singh in 2023.

According to police records, Bishnoi has never killed anyone himself. According to sources, sharpshooters and gangsters like Goldy Brar, Sachin Thapan, Anmol Bishnoi, Vikramjit Singh, Kala Jatheri and Kala Rana work for him. Most of the sharpshooters are said to be young men inducted through social media.

Early life

Born into a rich farmers’ family in 1993 in a village in Punjab’s Ferozpur, which borders Pakistan, Lawrence Bishnoi moved to Chandigarh in his teens and graduated in law from DAV College. He joined the Panjab University Students Council in 2011, where he met Goldy Brar. Bishnoi and Brar would later graduate from university politics to the world of crime.

The police said Bishnoi’s father owns 100 acres of agricultural land.

Between 2011 and 2012, several FIRs were registered against Bishnoi for crimes such as attempt to murder, trespassing, assault and robbery, all linked to his activities in student politics. He has been convicted in four criminal cases.

Bishnoi’s first crime was when he opened fire on a rival contestant during student body polls at Panjab University in 2010. He spent three months in jail. He later became the students’ union president.

Sources said Bishnoi’s brother Anmol and one of his close aides Rohit Godara — both based in the US — allegedly select “high-profile targets” and chalk out plans to execute the murders on Bishnoi’s advice.

“Godara has an extensive network of professional shooters in multiple Indian states,” said a Delhi police officer.

Sources said that in June 2022, the Indian high commission in Ottawa had flagged concerns to Canadian authorities over the involvement of gangsters operating from the North American nation in violent crimes in Punjab following Moosewala’s murder.

“The Bishnoi gang has carried out several criminal activities in Canada in the recent past. It is linked to a firing outside rapper A.P. Dhillon’s house in Canada as well as a shooting outside Punjabi singer and actor Gippy Grewal’s home in Canada,” said an NIA official.

Salman threat

In April last year, the Bishnoi gang had claimed responsibility for the firing outside superstar Salman Khan’s house, Galaxy Apartments, in Bandra. Investigators probing the firing found out that the plot was hatched in the US by a close aide of Bishnoi and the job was assigned to two professional shooters.

Mumbai police arrested the two shooters from a temple in Gujarat where they were hiding.

The probe had revealed that the attack was meticulously planned for a month in the US by the Bishnoi gang. The two accused were selected from a pool of professional shooters from Maharashtra, Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab.

Last year, the NIA had said Salman figured among the targets that Bishnoi planned to eliminate as retribution for the actor’s hunting of a blackbuck in 1998 which offended the Bishnoi community. The blackbuck is considered sacred by the community.

In March last year, Salman’s office received a threat mail following which the Mumbai police registered an FIR against Bishnoi under IPC Sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention).

Who’s helping?

A former CBI director told The Telegraph: “It is beyond any doubt that the Bihsnoi gang has become the most feared criminal gang in the country, probably having international connections. But what is beyond comprehension is how a dreaded criminal continues to operate his criminal network from jail and eliminate high-profile targets and terrorise Bollywood. Who is facilitating this?”

Bishnoi was moved to Sabarmati jail in Ahmedabad from Delhi’s Tihar jail in August last year in connection with a drug-smuggling case. Sources said the Union home ministry had issued an order under Section 268 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) stating that no state or agency can seek his custody for a year. The section gives the government the power to bar the movement of prisoners. The sources said the order was extended last month for another year.