Lawrence Bishnoi: India dipenjara. Sekarang Kanada mengklaim dia mengatur tindakan teror dari penjara | berita

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Follow From his cell in a high-security Indian prison, Lawrence Bishnoi allegedly commands an empire.

His throne room is a concrete box; his scepter a smartphone smuggled in to his confines.

From there, the 32-year-old kingpin stands accused of threatening a Bollywood superstar, murdering a pop icon, and orchestrating a political assassination halfway across the world.

Light-skinned with a thick mustache and a cold gaze, Bishnoi has long been accused by India’s top investigative body, the National Investigation Agency, of commanding a fearsome network of more than 700 members from behind bars, where he faces a litany of charges from criminal conspiracy and extortion, to murder and terror activities.

Then last month he became the face of a designated terrorist entity in Canada – after Ottawa accused India of using his gang to carry out crimes against Sikh dissidents on Canadian soil.

That designation elevated Bishnoi from being one of India’s most famous mob bosses – and a household name in his homeland – to an internationally wanted kingpin.

“Specific communities have been targeted for terror, violence and intimidation by the Bishnoi Gang.

Listing this group of criminal terrorists gives us more powerful and effective tools to confront and put a stop to their crimes,” Canada’s Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree said in a statement Monday.

Bishnoi denies many of the charges and accusations against him, and his lawyer told Berita that they will need to investigate Canada’s latest allegations.

Berita has contacted Sabarmati jail in the western state of Gujarat where Bishnoi is currently held but did not receive a response.

New Delhi has not publicly commented on the designation, which comes as the two countries work to repair ties after years of icy relations.

From small-town boy to gang leader Bishnoi’s story didn’t begin in the slums of the criminal underworld.

It began in the fertile fields of India’s Punjab state: the country’s “bread basket” celebrated for its vibrant culture and a deep-seated sense of local pride; but a land that has also been plagued by youth unemployment and widespread gang violence.

A farmer walks across his paddy field in Punjab on August 25, 2025.

Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images It is there that the former student activist began his transfomation into the alleged architect of a transnational criminal enterprise.

Before the world knew him as Lawrence Bishnoi, he was Balkaran Brar, and his world was confined to the dusty, meandering lanes of Dutarawali – an unassuming farming village home to just over 3,000 people, according to the 2011 census.

About a seven-hour drive from the nation’s capital and an hour from India’s tense border with neighboring Pakistan, it’s a place where life revolves around the harvest.

There, Bishnoi seemed destined for a middle-class life.

The son of a Haryana police constable, he began his education in a convent school, where his mother had big dreams for her son.

Bishnoi is well educated and comes from a “very good family,” said Jupinderjit Singh, journalist and author of the book “Who Killed Moosewala?” which chronicles one of the Bishnoi gang’s highest-profile alleged crimes – the killing of Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moosewala.

His name – a very “unusual” one for a Hindu boy, Singh noted – came from his mother, in homage to Sir Henry Lawrence, the first colonial-era British administrator of Punjab, because Bishnoi was born with very fair skin.

Lawrence Bishnoi coming out of court in Amritsar, India on October 31, 2022.

Hindustan Times/Hindustan Times/Getty Images The disconnect between Bishnoi the gangster and Bishnoi the child is starkest in his home village, where residents struggle to reconcile the two.

“He was a very good boy and had a good nature,” a Dutarawali resident told Berita affiliate Berita News-18 in an interview last year.

“If you go to anyone in this village, no one will say anything bad about him… I don’t believe he is a gangster.” Another said Bishnoi “never spoke ill of anyone” in the village.

“He treated everyone with respect,” the man told Berita News-18.

But soon the lanes of his village, where he would play volleyball and cricket with the nearby kids, proved too small a stage for his ambitions.

Sometime around 2010, Bishnoi left Dutarawali for Chandigarh – the bustling and modern state capital – reportedly to study law.

It was there that his metamorphosis from small-town boy to gang leader began, according to a lengthy 2023 chargesheet obtained by Berita that lays out his career and the dozens of accusations stacked against him over the years.

Bishnoi enrolled in Panjab University, an institution that has long served as a direct pipeline for the region’s future political strongmen and, in some cases, its most notorious criminals.

For Bishnoi, this environment offered the perfect apprenticeship; the often-violent world of student politics became his personal arena, a place where he learned that dominance was won with fists and, eventually, firearms.

Gandhi Bhavan by Pierre Jeanneret at the Panjab University in Chandigarh, India on June 7, 2023.

Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis News/Getty Images “In no time, Lawrence Bishnoi had built a huge criminal terror network in Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Rajasthan by way of their alliance with other gangs,” according to a list of Bishnoi’s charges from 2023, obtained by Berita.

According to Singh, Bishnoi has cultivated the public persona of a pious man dedicated to God and justice.

To support this monastic image, the gangster professes to stay off drugs, he said.

This self-portrayal extended to his political identity.

During a 2023 interview from behind bars with the ABP news channel, Bishnoi defined himself as a “patriot” and a “nationalist,” articulating his opposition to both Pakistan and the Khalistan movement, which pushes for a proposed Sikh homeland that would include parts of India.

Trouble with the law Bishnoi’s first time in handcuffs came when he was arrested for an alleged assault in 2010.

Within two years, he had 13 criminal cases lodged against him, according to the list of charges, each brief run-in with police allegedly hardening his resolve to expand his network.

The game changed in 2014, when a routine police stop in Rajasthan erupted into a shootout, landing him again in custody.

Yet, even then, the law couldn’t hold him.

In a daring escape a few months later, Bishnoi vanished, allegedly to settle a blood debt for a slain cousin, according to local media reports.

In March 2015, he was captured in Punjab.

This time, there would be no escape but as police would come to learn, caging Bishnoi wouldn’t end his reign.

“Lawrence Bishnoi runs the entire operations of the gang from within the jail,” his chargesheet says.

“He is so adept in operating from inside the jail,” it added.

“His first motive… was to threaten Salman Khan and to announce revenge for the killing of the blackbuck” Jupinderjit Singh, journalist and author Bishnoi used social media to grow his gang, uploading videos and photos of his group’s criminal acts to recruit young people, according to his chargesheet.

The Bishnoi Gang operates on anonymity, it added.

“A person in the gang knows only the person who is above him in the hierarchy and all the gang members involved in an operation do not have every information about the rest of the members,” the chargesheet says.

“The gang-members present at the time of killing also often do not know each other so that if one gets arrested, the rest of the gang members remain safe.” In the years after Bishnoi’s arrest, the alleged actions of the Bishnoi Gang only grew bolder.

In 2018, he gained widespread notoriety for publicly threatening Salman Khan, a Bollywood superstar and one of India’s most recognizable men.

The vendetta stemmed from Khan’s alleged 1998 poaching of two blackbuck antelopes, an animal considered sacred to Bishnoi’s gang.

Bollywood actor Salman Khan in Mumbai on September 5, 2024.

Sujit Jaiswal/AFP/Getty Images Bishnoi is a follower of the Bishnoi community, a Hindu group in northern India often called the “Guardians of Nature.” Its followers strictly adhere to the 29 commandments of Guru Jambheshwar, which include the sacred principles of worshiping and protecting all animals.

“His first motive… was to threaten Salman Khan and to announce revenge for the killing of the blackbuck,” Singh said.

Four years later, police accused him of masterminding the killing of Moosewala, a Punjabi icon whose lyrics chronicled the hardships of life on the streets.

Bishnoi denies involvement in Moosewala’s murder, but in an explosive interview from behind bars, accused his close aide of orchestrating it.

In the same breath, he also doubled down on his threats against Khan, declaring it his life’s goal to make the celebrity pay.

Sidhu Moosewala performing at the Wireless Festival in London on September 12, 2021.

Joseph Okpako/WireImage/Getty Images Bishnoi’s international reach Despite him spending nearly a decade in prison, Bishnoi’s reach has allegedly metastasized into a transnational criminal syndicate, operating in the United States, Dubai, and Canada, according to the chargesheet.

The plot thickened last year when Canadian authorities linked Bishnoi to the targeting of Sikh separatists on its soil, including the killing of activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was gunned down in British Columbia in 2023.

Nijjar was a designated terrorist in India, accused of being behind a banned militant group that sought to “radicalize the Sikh community across the world” in support of Khalistan.

The movement is banned in India and considered a national security threat.

India has long accused Canada – home to one of the largest Sikh populations outside India – of harboring Sikh extremists.

A photo of Hardeep Singh Nijjar is seen during a news conference on Friday, May 3, 2024.

Ethan Cairns/AP In turn, Ottawa has accused New Delhi of sponsoring violence against Sikh politicians on its soil.

Last October, during testimony to a parliamentary committee, then Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said India was using “criminal organizations like the Lawrence Bishnoi gang” to carry out “violence against Canadians” who disagreed with the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

India has repeatedly denied any involvement in Nijjar’s murder.

Indian law enforcement officials are cooperating with Canada on the investigation, Canada’s Foreign Minister Anita Anand told Berita affiliate CBC News this month.

Berita has contacted India’s foreign ministry for comment.

Bishnoi’s gang, now officially designated a terrorist entity by the Canadian government, is accused of unleashing a campaign of terror upon diaspora communities.

“The Bishnoi Gang engages in murder, shootings and arson, and generates terror through extortion and intimidation,” Canada’s department of public safety said in a statement.

“They create a climate of insecurity in these communities by targeting them, their prominent community members, businesses and cultural figures.” Related article Thousands gather to protest clashes between Hindu nationalists and Sikh separatists at the Hindu Sabha Mandir temple in Brampton, Ontario on November 4.

Nick Lachance/Toronto Star/Getty Images Clashes erupted outside a Hindu temple near Toronto.

They’re the latest sign of Canada and India’s spiraling relations The World Sikh Organization in Canada cheered the designation.

“The Bishnoi Gang has been a key player in India’s campaign of transnational repression against Sikhs in Canada,” including Nijjar’s assassination, the group alleged in a statement.

The designation grants Canadian authorities sweeping new powers to freeze assets, block funding, and prosecute anyone associated with the group.

But even with dozens of criminal cases against him Bishnoi seems unperturbed by the labels associated with him.

“I don’t feel bad being called a gangster, it’s the identity God gave me,” Bishnoi said to ABP in 2024.

“After spending nine years in jail I don’t dream of becoming good, I’m good just the way I am.” India Asia National security Terrorism See all topics Facebook Tweet Email Link Link Copied!

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