Who is Lawrence Bishnoi, the gangster at the centre of India-Canada spat?

Canadian officials this week said Bishnoi’s gang was targeting Sikh dissidents at the behest of the Indian government. It’s a PR coup for India’s most notorious crime boss.

New Delhi, India — India-Canada bilateral relations touched a historic low this week when both countries expelled six diplomats each, in tit-for-tat moves, after Ottawa doubled down on its accusation that the Indian government masterminded the 2023 murder of a prominent Sikh separatist leader.

While levelling serious conspiracy charges against India’s senior-most diplomats in Ottawa, the Canadian officials dropped another bombshell allegation — linking the diplomatic mission with India’s most notorious crime syndicate boss, Lawrence Bishnoi.

Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), which has been investigating the killing of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, blamed the “Bishnoi group” for carrying out hit jobs at the behest of the Indian government’s external spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

Bishnoi is currently imprisoned in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat — in the Sabarmati Central Jail in Ahmedabad — ruled by his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

So, who is Lawrence Bishnoi? How does he continue to run his crime syndicate from behind bars? And how does a gangster fit into a serious geopolitical crisis between two democracies with deep historical ties?

Bishnoi, 31, first captured national attention when he was linked with the killing of hip-hop icon, Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moose Wala, on May 29, 2022. Moose Wala was also a member of India’s opposition party, Congress. Bishnoi’s associates claimed responsibility for the murder as part of an intergang rivalry.

More recently, Bishnoi’s gang