Lawrence Bishnoi, a 33-year-old gangster currently imprisoned in India, and his North American deputy, Satinderjeet Singh, 32, known as Goldy Brar, have been charged by US federal prosecutors with ordering the 2023 assassination of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada.
A federal grand jury returned the nine-count indictment on 1 July 2026. It was unsealed in Los Angeles on Tuesday, 7 July, as part of a coordinated international law enforcement operation codenamed Operation Hard Ball involving the FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Los Angeles Police Department, and US Customs and Border Protection.
The indictment alleges Bishnoi directed the killing from an Indian jail cell using contraband cellphones and voice-over-internet-protocol devices smuggled into his prison, providing a co-conspirator with a photograph of Nijjar and multiple addresses to facilitate the assassination.
Nijjar, 45, a Canadian citizen, was shot dead by two masked gunmen as he left the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, on 18 June 2023. He had publicly campaigned for Khalistan, the creation of an independent Sikh homeland in Punjab. India had designated him a terrorist.
Brar remains at large. The FBI is offering a reward of up to USD 50,000 for information leading to his arrest. Bishnoi has been in prison in India since 2015. RCMP Deputy Commissioner Lisa Moreland confirmed the US will seek Bishnoi’s extradition from India.
The US indictment does not allege any role by the Indian government in Nijjar’s killing.
What Operation Hard Ball found
Tuesday’s action was the result of a years-long federal investigation into three India-based transnational organised crime groups: the Bishnoi gang, the Bhagwanpuria syndicate and the Dhanda gang. Thirty-seven defendants were charged across three separate indictments. Twenty-four were arrested, eleven of them in California.
During the investigation, law enforcement seized approximately 1,000 kg of cocaine, 1 kg of heroin, USD 40,000 in cash and a dozen firearms. Ten fugitives remain at large: seven in the US, two in India and one in Europe.
“Transnational criminal gangs who spread fear, drugs, and violence will face the full force of justice and the weight of the federal government,” said First Assistant United States Attorney Bill Essayli at a press conference in Los Angeles. “There is no safe harbour for these thugs.”
Patrick Grandy, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, said the operation “strikes at the heart of three brutal transnational organisations that have terrorised families, exploited communities, and stolen lives through ruthless acts of violence in the US and abroad.”
Who is Bishnoi?
Lawrence Bishnoi, born Anmol Bishnoi, is a 33-year-old gangster from Punjab, India. He has been in prison in India since 2015, facing trial in multiple criminal cases. Before turning to crime, he was a student union leader. According to the US indictment, he built a criminal enterprise spanning multiple continents, using contraband communication devices from his jail cell to direct political assassinations, murders, extortions, kidnappings and drug trafficking. Canada designated the Bishnoi enterprise a terrorist entity in September 2025. He is not the same person as Salman Khan’s alleged stalker; the name recurs in Indian news in multiple contexts.
The three gangs and their reach
The Bishnoi gang indictment focuses on the Nijjar assassination, extortion of victims in California and Los Angeles, and drug trafficking. The indictment alleges that between December 2025 and January 2026, Bishnoi, Brar and associates attempted to extort USD 5 million from a victim in Thousand Oaks, California, threatening violence against the victim and their family via WhatsApp and encrypted messaging applications.
The Bhagwanpuria syndicate, led by Jaggu Bhagwanpuria, 38, of Punjab, India, also currently imprisoned in India, is described in the DOJ indictment as a transnational criminal organisation with more than 1,000 members and associates worldwide and more than 100 in the United States. The DOJ confirmed the Bhagwanpuria gang has members across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
The indictment alleges the Bhagwanpuria syndicate corrupted law enforcement officers in India and partnered with government officials to assist in extortion schemes, targeting perceived rivals by feeding false information to Indian police to trigger criminal proceedings against them.
Three Canadian defendants, including the leader of the Dhanda gang, were arrested in British Columbia on allegations they smuggled hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and methamphetamine each week from the US into Canada.
The diplomatic background
Nijjar’s killing triggered a major diplomatic crisis between India and Canada in September 2023, when then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canadian authorities were “actively pursuing credible allegations” linking Indian government agents to the murder. New Delhi rejected the claim, calling it “absurd and motivated.”
In May 2024, Canada arrested and charged four Indian nationals over the killing. They are awaiting trial. The US indictment charging Bishnoi and Brar does not name the alleged shooters, referring to them only as co-conspirators, and does not allege Indian government involvement in the assassination.
Canada-India relations have improved since Prime Minister Mark Carney took office. Carney visited India in February 2026 on his first official trip and opened talks on a trade deal expected to be completed by November. His approach has drawn criticism from some Sikh advocacy groups, who have called on Ottawa to do more to protect Sikh Canadians from foreign interference and transnational repression.
What happened in the hours around the announcement
Hours before law enforcement officials announced Operation Hard Ball, a house in Surrey, British Columbia, was hit by an extortion-related shooting, the latest in a sustained campaign of violence against South Asian communities in the Vancouver region that has continued through 2025 and 2026.
Canada’s Justice Minister Sean Fraser described 7 July as “an extraordinary day” and thanked the RCMP and its US counterparts for what he called “remarkable” cross-border police work. He said the “size of these crimes cannot be overstated.”
The Sikh Federation UK said the public has “a legitimate interest in understanding whether investigators have identified links to foreign state actors and what institutional measures are being taken to dismantle those networks.”
CBC News noted that a fracture between Bishnoi and Brar has affected how extortion is being carried out in Canada, with the two factions targeting each other and civilians alike. Analysts cautioned that the arrests, while significant, may not immediately reduce the extortion crisis affecting South Asian communities in Surrey and the broader Vancouver area.
What happened to Hardeep Singh Nijjar
Nijjar was 45 years old when he was shot dead on 18 June 2023. He was a plumber by trade, a Canadian citizen since the 1990s, and the president of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara in Surrey, where he was killed. He had been publicly campaigning for a Khalistan referendum and was designated a terrorist by India in 2020. He was shot by two masked gunmen as he sat in his vehicle in the gurdwara car park. The killing was captured on surveillance footage later broadcast by CBC News.
