An international operation targeting Indian organized crime groups has led to 24 arrests, US officials said Tuesday, including in connection with the murder in Canada of a prominent Sikh figure.
The operation involved law enforcement officials operating in the United States, Canada and Europe, who together had been investigating criminal syndicates engaged in organized crime, targeted killings, shootings, extortion and drug trafficking.
Dozens of people have been charged, including two who U.S. officials say ran their global criminal syndicates while imprisoned in India. All but 10 of them are now in custody.
“Transnational criminal gangs that spread fear, drugs and violence will face the full force of justice and the weight of the federal government,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli.
Among the crimes alleged in the indictments unsealed Tuesday is the 2023 murder of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent Punjabi-born activist for “Khalistan,” a separatist movement seeking an independent homeland for Sikhs.
Lawrence Bishnoi, 33, of Punjab, whose organization is designated a terrorist enterprise in Canada, is accused of ordering the murder from his Indian prison cell.
Officials say that in public Bishnoi presented himself as a deeply religious “patriot,” but he used this image to recruit members and associates for his crime syndicate in India, the United States and elsewhere.
Privately, they say, he presided over a vast criminal enterprise that spanned multiple continents, personally directing political assassinations, murders, shootings, extortion, kidnappings, drug trafficking, human trafficking and other crimes.
Also charged is Jaggu Bhagwanpuria, 38, of Punjab, India, a gangster imprisoned in India who is an associate-turned-rival of Bishnoi. Bhagwanpuria founded his own criminal gang which now has more than 1,000 members in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Bhagwanpuria is accused, along with 16 other defendants, of operating a criminal enterprise that engaged in murder-for-hire, drug trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, arms trafficking and other crimes throughout the world, including the United States and Canada.
