High-tech comms, arms-dropping drones: How Bishnoi runs ops from jail

If key members of Lawrence Bishnoi’s gang, including their boss himself, are sitting in jails in India and the rest are outside the country, how do they keep in touch and plan their crimes?

The arrest of Vikram Brar by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in July 2023 shed light on the astounding way Bishnoi’s gang operates. The NIA team that went to the UAE to fetch Brar identified him as the “Communication Control Room” or CCR of the gang.

This key aide of Bishnoi ensured that the gang members sitting in Indian jails could closely coordinate with those in places such as Canada, the UAE, London, and many West Coast towns of the US.

The Brar control room

Brar had been on the run since 2020 and was wanted by the law enforcement agencies in connection with 11 criminal cases involving murder, attempt to murder, and extortion. As many as 11 lookout circulars (issued against those who are a flight risk) had been handed out against him on the request of police in states such as Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, and Rajasthan.

Brar allegedly also played a key role in the 2022 killing of singer Sidhu Moosewala, which brought the whole Bishnoi gang to national and international infamy.

“Brar ran a very sophisticated operation from the UAE. He was acting as a CCR for the gang,” an officer involved in bringing Brar back to India told The Federal.

Also read: Extortion, smuggling, terror: Bishnoi’s men and Canada-based Khalistanis

A well-oiled operation

The Brar control room used to coordinate the calls between Bishnoi and his key associate Goldy Brar in Canada. On their directions, he would allegedly make extortion calls to various people.

If required, Brar’s CCR also organised calls between the main gang leaders and the other members. For his services to run the control room, the Bishnoi gang used to send him a part of the extorted money through hawala channels. It was a very well-oiled operation.

Ties from student days

Like Bishnoi, Brar was also once associated with the Students Organisation of Panjab University (SOPU) at the said varsity.

“Many future associates of Lawrence Bishnoi, such as Brar or Sampat Nehra, met him for the first time while studying in Chandigarh and in connection with SOPU,” said a Punjab police official.

“Lawrence had come to study law in Chandigarh and got involved in student politics, which by then had become very violent. Lawrence and some of his gang members are from communities that take an insult to ‘izzat’ (respect) very seriously. And these so-called insults got him involved in minor scuffles, which blew up into bigger fights and, finally, to criminal acts,” the official narrated.

Also read: Can Bishnoi position himself as Don of Mumbai? Is that what he wants?

Old rivalry

The official added that the Bishnoi gang’s rivalry with the Bambiha gang also started at that time. “Though the Bambiha gang’s leader Davinder Singh Sidhu was killed in a police encounter, the rivalry goes on,” said the official.

The Bambiha gang is now led by Gaurav Patial alias Lucky Patial, who is based in Armenia these days, said the official. Like the Bishnoi gang, the Bambiha gang, too, formed strategic alliances with various other gangs in different states which are opposed to the hegemony of Bishnoi’s gang.

Both the gangs, along with their strategic partners, are now involved in a bitter turf war in many north Indian states, including in the national capital.

Delhi fallout of turf war

The daylight murder of a gym owner named Nadir Shah in Delhi’s posh Greater Kailash area last month was a fallout of that turf war, the Punjab Police official disclosed.

Shah was killed by Bishnoi’s shooters and his strategic partner Hashim Baba who, too, has a gang of his own active in north-east Delhi.

Like Bishnoi, Hashim Baba is also behind bars in Delhi’s Tihar jail. It is suspected that Bishnoi and Hashim Baba were in touch with each other using a similar “control room” before Nadir Shah’s murder.

Also read: Bishnoi's Men: How a pool of thugs carried out Baba Siddique’s killing

The Sikligar Sikhs

Tracing the journey of these gangsters, the Punjab Police official said that once upon a time, violent students used to sort out their fights using hockey sticks. But the easy availability of guns over the years handed them bigger weapons to spill blood on the streets.

The illegal gun factories of Bihar were one way of procuring weapons for north Indian gangsters. But later, officers in the Punjab Police suspect, gangsters such as Bishnoi and his rivals started procuring guns from areas around Burhanpur on the border of Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, where the “Sikligar” Sikhs are settled.

The Sikligar Sikhs are traditionally “lohars” (blacksmiths) by profession and have specialised in the craft of making and polishing weapons for three centuries. Historians say the title “Sikligar” was bestowed upon them by the 10th Guru of Sikh faith, Guru Gobind Singh, for whom they turned the iron fort at Punjab’s Anandpur Sahib into an armoury.

But the Sikligars did not have much to do when modern gun factories came up. Hence, some of them started getting into illegal gun manufacturing and were tapped by gangsters to fulfil their demands for easy access to guns.

Across the border

Later, the gangs started procuring automatic weapons from Pakistan which are dropped by drones in the border areas of Punjab. In the past two and a half years, around 1,100 drones have been sighted in the bordering districts of Punjab. Of these, 388 have been sighted in 2024 itself. The Border Security Force (BSF), which guards the India-Pakistan border, managed to shoot down 150 of them.

In several high-profile cases of attacks on Punjab Police — including the rocket attacks on its intelligence unit headquarters and a police station in the sensitive Tarn Taran district in 2022 — the weapons were dropped by drones from across the border before reaching the foot soldiers, says the NIA.

In both cases, the Bishnoi gang was involved, said the NIA, which filed formal charges against Lawrence Bishnoi and his key gang members such as Goldy Brar.