Astha Pande/VOIWORLD
The recent development comes amid an already fragile phase of diplomatic ties in India and Canada relations. The Canadian government has officially listed India’s Bishnoi gang as a terrorist entity. This also grants its law enforcement the sweeping powers to seize assets, freeze funds and prosecute the individuals associated with the group.
Following the recent shooting incidents, claimed by the gang through social media, Canadian police have asserted that several Indian agents used Bishnoi’s network to carry out violent acts of threat shooting, extortion and killings against pro-Khalistan elements.
For India, the Bishnoi network remains a crucial law-and-order challenge, this is not a political or ideological one. However, officials pointed out that the Bishnoi syndicate is a criminal network that has long been under investigation and arrests by Indian agencies as well, including the National Investigation Agency (NIA), for a range of crimes within the country. Thus, linking their acts to any state-backed activity or branding it as an Indian based gang is concerning as it might cause harm to the Indian diaspora in foreign countries.
This move by Canada is followed after the extreme pressure from opposition parties and provincial leaders in Alberta and British Columbia, who have urged some serious action against the organized criminal networks operating with transnational links. To further get into knowing Lawrence Bishnoi is one of India’s most notorious gangsters. He is currently lodged in a high-security prison. Indian investigators allege that despite being behind
bars, Bishnoi continues to control a syndicate of nearly 700 members involved in extortion,
smuggling, drug trafficking, and targeted killings.
This further explains how gang’s operations stretch beyond India’s borders. In Canada, it allegedly has ties with several local crime groups and extortion networks who target members of the Indian diaspora. Bishnoi’s known aide, Fateh Portugal, recently claimed responsibility for a shooting incident outside comedian Kapil Sharma’s café in Canada, he also boasted about extorting $5 million from Punjabi singers.
India’s stance on this stands firm and bounded by its own overlaps as it has repeatedly warned Canada against this, it also underscores a larger concern that criminal and separatist networks abroad often intersect with countries own interests, thus resulting in exploitation of diaspora and their vulnerabilities and diplomatic sensitivities.
