Lucknow: The leader of one of the most notorious gangs with alleged involvement in the drug-terror network, Lawrence Bishnoi has established a firm foothold in Uttar Pradesh, be it among small-time criminals or the baahubalis of the northern state.
Bishnoi is also the prime accused in the Sidhu Moosewala murder case, which he is said to have planned from inside Tihar Jail.
According to media reports in June, in a case related to funding of Khalistani outfits, Bishnoi himself had told the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that he has alliances with gangsters from UP, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi, and that politicians and businessmen paid him to make threat calls, which would then help them seek security cover from the local police.
Haryana police has also said that the gang has strong links with alleged arms suppliers of UP.
Not only this, youngsters from UP — allegedly part of the Lawrence Bishnoi-Goldy Brar gang — have also been found to be involved in serious crimes in Punjab and Haryana, such as the May 2022 rocket propelled grenade (RPG) attack on the Punjab police’s intelligence headquarters in Mohali.
ThePrint looks at the faces of the gang in UP and its links with arms dealers of the state.
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UP youth in net
One of Bishnoi’s associates Vikas Singh (who is in his 40s) also a history sheeter of the Maharajganj police station in Ayodhya, was arrested on 20 June this year by the NIA for allegedly harbouring Deepak Surakhpur alias Ranga, and Divyanshu — the duo who allegedly launched the Mohali RPG attack — in his Devgarh village, and also in Lucknow.
While Ranga, from Haryana’s Jhajjar district, was arrested from Gorakhpur in January 2023, Ayodhya native Divyanshu was arrested by the Delhi Police in October last year. The latter even claimed he was a juvenile and pleaded in a Mohali court that he be tried as one. However, he is being tried as an adult on the directions of the Juvenile Justice Board there.
In a statement soon after Vikas’s arrest, the NIA said its investigation had revealed that Vikas had connected Divyanshu to the Lawrence Bishnoi syndicate and the duo were also involved in numerous targeted/contract killings, including those of businessman Sanjay Biyani in Nanded and gangster Rana Kandhowalia in Punjab.
According to reports, Vikas had allegedly sheltered several shooters of the Bishnoi gang in Lucknow involved in the double murders of Ajay Sharma and Vineet Singh, Chandigarh-based students associated with the Hindustan Student Association, on 19 December, 2019.
The NIA further called Vikas’s arrest as related to the “terrorist-gangster conspiracy hatched by members of Lawrence Bishnoi criminal syndicates/gangs based in India and abroad, to raise funds and recruit youth to carry out terrorist acts in Delhi and other parts of the country.”
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Ansari family
Apart from recruiting hoodlums for the gang, the Bishnoi gang also has a strong connection with arms suppliers of UP.
One of them is Bulandshahr-based Shahbaz Ansari, in his late 20s, who was arrested by the NIA in December 2022 for allegedly supplying arms to the Bishnoi gang for the murder of Sidhu Moosewala, who was killed by an AK-47 assault rifle and a 9mm pistol reportedly.
Most recently, a Hindustan Times report showed that according to the documents the NIA submitted in the court, Shahbaz had got in touch with a Pakistani national who works as a hawala operator in Dubai and the latter had put him in touch with another Pakistani national and arms smuggler identified as Hamid.
It quoted NIA documents as saying that during their meeting, Hamid had told Ansari that they were going to “supply assault rifles and other weapons to gangster Lawrence Bishnoi for Moosewala’s killing and that Hamid had also told him about how he was in touch with Canada-based Goldy Brar and had supplied weapons to him many times.”
Speaking to ThePrint, UP police officers confirmed that while Shahbaz was arrested for the first time, his father Mohd Qurbaan Ansari and uncle Mohd Rehan Ansari had been arrested by the Delhi Police’s special cell with 10 foreign-made sophisticated arms and 157 live cartridges worth Rs 1 crore in 2006. The arms were of German, American, Chinese and Russian origin and included the German Walther and Sig Sauer of the US.
The special cell had then found that Qurban and his relatives were involved in import and smuggling of illegal foreign weapons from Pakistan via Nepal and their supply in Delhi-NCR, show reports.
Speaking to ThePrint, a UP police officer said that the family had a factory of electrical items till a few years ago in Bulandshahr’s Khurja and Qurbaan died during the Covid pandemic in 2020.
Zuaib Ansari, a relative of Shahbaz, told ThePrint, “He was arrested for the first time. We don’t have any information about what is being said in the media. My brother met NIA officials because they had arrived at his house. Qurbaan is no more now. Recently, a team from UP STF also arrived and we met them too.”
Bulandshahr Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Shlok Kumar told ThePrint that Shahbaz doesn’t have any criminal record there. “We checked the details of the accused but found that he had no case lodged here. This wasn’t his area of operation but the same cannot be said about other places,” he said.
Shashank Pandey
Gorakhpur’s Shashank Pandey, another man in his 20s, is another arms supplier allegedly for the Bishnoi gang. Pandey has several cases lodged against him in Haryana’s Ambala and police fear he may have fled abroad.
In July last year, the Ambala police reportedly arrested four members of the Lawrence Bishnoi-Goldy Brar gang, including Pandey, and recovered arms and ammunition from their possession.
“The four criminals are associated with the Bishnoi-Brar gang. They were in regular touch with them and we have recovered three weapons from them. The main accused, Pandey, was involved in a robbery in Padao area…he has been involved in crime in Jaipur too,” Ambala SP Jashandeep Singh said to the media.
Speaking to ThePrint, SP Singh confirmed that Pandey was working with the Bishnoi-Brar gang and soon after he got out on bail after the July arrest, he was again booked for making extortion threats to an Ambala-based businessman.
“Apart from Madhya Pradesh, the main source of country-made arms is west UP’s Shamli. The easiest way to source weapons from Pakistan is via drone-dropping in J&K and Punjab,” he said.
Sources in Gorakhpur Police said Pandey’s family hails from Bihar’s Champaran and arrived there about a decade back.
“He told his friends that he had found a job in Ambala but got associated with the Bishnoi gang,” a Gorakhpur police officer said, adding that Pandey had no criminal history in local police records.
Speaking to ThePrint, Gorakhpur SP (City) Krishan Kumar Bishnoi said Pandey is not a well-known criminal in Gorakhpur and not on their radar.
“It is possible that he was here and then left the area but we will have to check his criminal record,” he said.
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Bishnoi name comes up in baahubalis’ fight
Ahead of the 2022 assembly polls, Abhay Singh, MLA of the Gosainganj constituency, wrote to the Ayodhya SSP, DGP and the Principal Secretary (home), alleging that gangster and ex-MLA Inder Pratap Tiwari alias Khabbu Tiwari, ex-MP Dhananjay Singh, and Vikas Singh were hatching a conspiracy to get him killed.
He reportedly alleged that some armed men were camping in Ayodhya and he had information that they belonged to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, “arranged by Khabbu and Dhananjay to eliminate him”.
Alleging that Divyanshu (arrested in the Mohali RPG attack case) was trained by the Bishnoi gang to operate an AK-47, sniper rifles and rocket launchers, he accused them of “turning local youths into criminals”.
Speaking to ThePrint last month, Abhay said that the accused, including Lawrence’s cousin Sachin Bishnoi, Kapil Pandit and Manpreet alias Mani, who were allegedly arranged to eliminate him, had camped at Vikas’ Devgarh house along with some other unknown suspects, and had also stayed at his Lucknow flat.
Ahead of the assembly elections, the masked trio was allegedly present in the election rallies of Arti Tiwari, Khabbu’s wife who fought the Gosainganj election against Abhay. The photos, which went viral, are in ThePrint’s possession.
Further, undated pictures of the trio in Lucknow’s Ambedkar Memorial Park and Bara Imambara had also come to fore which UP police sources said pertained to the time before their arrest. They, too, are in ThePrint’s possession.
A native of Rajasthan’s Churu, Kapil was arrested for his involvement in the Sidhu Moosewala murder case last September. A Punjab Police probe revealed he had also done recce of actor Salman Khan’s house. Meanwhile, Sachin Bishnoi has been extradited from Azerbaijan and brought back last Tuesday.
MLA Abhay Singh has also alleged financial ties between the Bishnoi gang and gangster-turned-politician Dhananjay Singh.
“A toll plaza in Jaunpur and others in parts of UP are being operated by people associated with Surya Narayan Reddy of Telangana and Dhananjay Singh. Lawrence Bishnoi too is associated with the latter and has interests in the plazas,” he said.
Denying the allegations, Dhananjay said Abhay himself was a criminal and was associated with the Mukhtar Ansari gang.
“He has 50 cases against him. He orchestrated an attack on me in 2002 with an AK-47. My gunner, some others, and I were injured. The judgment in that case is set to be pronounced soon which is why he is saying all this to come into the limelight…He has a rivalry with Khabbu Tiwari and he is always cooking up stories against me to defame me,” he told ThePrint Saturday.
Rival group has UP links too
Bishnoi’s rival Bambiha gang too has also allegedly been receiving help from their contact persons in UP.
Three such alleged associates — Harwinder alias Fauji of Bulandshahr and brothers Simranjeet Singh alias Jujhar and Yadwinder Singh alias Azad of UP’s Pilibhit — were arrested by the Punjab police in connection with the murder of international kabaddi player Sandeep Nangal Ambian on 14 March 2022 in Jalandhar’s Mallian village.
Speaking to ThePrint, Jalandhar SP Manpreet Singh said that both the brothers were associated with Sukha Duneke who is a part of the Bambiha group.
“Fauji is one of the most notorious criminals from Bulandshahr who has committed several murders, robberies earlier as well. Jujhar and Azad were linked to gangster Sukha Duneke of the Bambiha gang and provided shelter to shooters at their behest,” he said.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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