A ‘gangster’ is blowing up India-Canada relations—from behind bars
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Lawrence Bishnoi, a 31-year-old vegetarian with a handlebar mustache who authorities say controls a violent gang from his high-security prison cell in India, is at the center of a diplomatic brawl between Canada and India. To Indian law-enforcement officials, Bishnoi is a “dreaded gangster" who over the past decade has made a daring prison break, threatened a Bollywood star, and found his gang accused of killing a rapper considered a rival.
The notoriety has made him a hero in the Punjabi village where he grew up. But in Canada, he is accused of being an Indian-government enforcer, whose criminal network violently punishes political dissidents and critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Canada says Bishnoi’s group has helped Modi’s government contract criminal groups to attack and kill Canadian Sikh separatists considered by India as terrorists.
India calls the allegations preposterous, and both countries expelled top diplomats this month, exchanging fiery condemnations. All of the attention has only bolstered Bishnoi’s emergence as an object of pop-culture fascination in India. A coming web series, “Lawrence—a Gangster Story," will chronicle his life.
Authorities say his gang’s spread into Canada is part of his ambition to be a global player in the underworld. His network—dubbed this year by India’s counterterrorism force as “the dreaded gangster Lawrence Bishnoi’s organized terror-crime syndicate"—is also active in Australia, Italy and Dubai, police and security officials said. “Bishnoi’s idea is to become a notorious don," said a senior Indian police official.
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