Washington DC: Frozen french fries meant for hungry customers at a Wendy’s outlet lined the cavernous interiors of the semi-truck—of no particular interest to the border inspectors at first glance. The truck, however, had logged hundreds of kilometres over its scheduled route from Vancouver to Los Angeles, and the inspectors thought it warranted closer examination. Tucked away behind the fries, they discovered 120 kilograms of premium British Columbia cannabis, with an estimated street price of over $300,000.
Like Jashandeep Singh, the driver caught ferrying the ‘bud’ to Los Angeles back in 2003, ethnic-Punjabi criminal groups are recruiting hundreds of young asylum-seekers from India over 20 years later.
Ever since the arrest this week of organised crime boss Lawrence Bishnoi’s brother, Anmol Bishnoi, who is now being held at a prison in Pottawattamie, Iowa, investigators have been working to unpack a complex story involving the cross-border trafficking of migrants, narcotics cartels, assassins for hire and the Sikh separatist movement.
The Bishnoi gang—presumed to have murdered pro-Sikh separatist operative Hardeep Singh Nijjar in a hit allegedly organised by the Indian government—isn’t the largest, or most dangerous actor, though. The rival gang of Rajesh Kumar, known by the name “Sonu Khatri”, has brought in up to 100 migrants from villages around Punjab’s Nawanshahr to the United States, an Indian intelligence officer told ThePrint.
Earlier this year, the Punjab and Haryana High Court heard evidence that Rajesh’s gang members—nicknamed “Khatri key khiladi”, a wry pun invoking a similarly-named television series—had acquired dozens of fake passports using fictitious addresses in the town of Tohana in Haryana through a ring of middlemen and corrupt officials.
Growing numbers of ethnic-Punjabi migrants—many of them asylum-seekers working as truck drivers while their applications are processed—are being held on organised-crime-related charges. Gagandeep Singh, held in February, is charged with shipping 890 kilograms of cocaine, valued at $8.7 million, hidden in a cargo of agricultural equipment.
Ayush Sharma and Subham Kumar, both truck drivers working for Gurmeet Singh ‘King’, a Canadian of Punjabi-origin, are accused along with their boss of transporting 845 kg of methamphetamine, 951 kg of cocaine, 20 kg of fentanyl and 4 kg of heroin.
Fresno-based Simranjit Singh and Gusimrat Singh, similarly, were held in August, while allegedly attempting to drive $10.5 million of cocaine and methamphetamine from California to Boston. There are dozens of similar cases each year, an Indian diplomat told ThePrint.
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Lethal blossoming
Times do change. British Columbia cannabis, a citrus-scented strain known as BC bud and prized by users since it was discovered by the counterculture in the 1960s, can now be legally purchased online. Early in the 1990s, though, growing BC bud was a semi-industrial criminal activity.
Economist Stephen Easton calculated in 2003 that a typical $100,000 investment in a cannabis-growing greenhouse offered an over 70 percent return, even allowing for the five percent chance of being caught by police. Low prosecution rates in British Columbia were a further incentive.
For emerging ethnic-Punjabi gangs, the cannabis trade offered enormous opportunities. Early on, the fact that ethnic-Punjabis knew berry farmers on either side of the border made it easy to walk consignments across. Embedded in the trucking business in both California and British Columbia, some in the community later proved willing to offer their services to the gangs to ship cannabis southwards and bring cocaine to the north.
The phenomenon soon spread to California, too, journalist Lisa Fernandez reported in 2008, with violent gangs like the Santa Clara Punjabi Boys, Aim to Kill, and the All Indian Mob drawing members from low-income new migrant families.
Less visible, though, was another critical linkage. Top gangsters like Raminder ‘Ron’ Dosanjh and his brother Jimsher ‘Jimmy’ Dosanjh were key figures in the Sikh separatist movement, leading the now-banned International Sikh Youth Federation. Gang leader Raminder ‘Mindy’ Bhandher lived with Sikh separatist and 1985 Air India bombing accused Ripudman Singh Malik—himself later assassinated in a 2022 contract-killing.
Evidence emerged from the trial of hitman Hardeep Uppal in 2003 that the Babbar Khalsa had paid $50,000 to gangsters Ravinder ‘Robbie’ Soomel and Daljit Basran for murdering anti-Sikh separatist journalist Tara Singh Hayer, a key witness in the Air India case.
Journalist Malcolm Gay reported in 2003 that funds from the drug trade and help from gang muscle were widely suspected to have helped pro-Sikh separatist leaders, like Jaswinder Singh Jandi and Jasjeet Singh Chela, capture control of the important Fremont Gurudwara in 1996. The two men owned the business which had hired Jashandeep, the driver involved in the 2003 French Fry case. Efforts to build a case had, however, collapsed after Jashandeep fled home to India while out on bail.
Even when cases linked to separatist violence did make it to trial, courts were not always helpful. In 2003, an appeals court freed Harpal Cheema, even though the Department of Homeland Security held that he had solicited funds for separatist terrorists. Among other things, the court had observed that a terrorist threat to India did not necessarily constitute a threat to the United States.
The links between gangs and the Sikh separatist movement are not always ideological, notes Delhi-based expert Ajai Sahni. “There are cases where Hindu gangsters have been involved in hits paid for by Sikh separatists in the West, and the same gang might have pro-separatist and anti-separatist figures in it. For the gangsters, this is just a means of gaining some legitimacy and influence among the community.”
The pit stop
Like the earlier generation of ethnic-Punjabi gang leaders, the new arrivals are not known for being discreet. Following the killing of Punjabi pop-star Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, popularly known as Sidhu Moosewala, in 2022, Anmol Bishnoi fled India on a fake passport. The next year, though, a video surfaced of Anmol at a wedding in Bakersfield, California, where singers Karan Aujla and Sherry Maan performed.
The gangsters showed off at home, too. Harjeet Mann, Jasdev Singh and Sukhraj Dhaliwal, arrested on drugs charges in Canada in 2008, spent lakhs in Jagraon on school fees and dowries for girls from poor families.
Fuelled by booming demand for truck drivers, meanwhile, many young ethnic-Punjabi asylum seekers are finding work in the sector—some running drugs or engaging in violence to repay debts to the gangs which helped traffic them through Mexico.
Even though ethnic-Punjabi gangs are small actors in the organised crime violence—and have not so far engaged in the kinds of savage violence that Mexican cartels have acquired—there are disturbing signs that things could change.
Last year, an investigation into a shooting at the Sacramento Sikh Society Gurudwara led investigators to make multiple arrests involving members of two separate gangs, known as Minta and the AK-47 Group. Following an attempted murder at a wedding in 2021, police say, members of the two gangs shot ten of each other’s members in tit-for-tat hits.
Last month, police in Canada held 61-year-old Narinder Nagra, together with her sons Navdeep and Ravneet, on charges of trafficking guns and drugs among an unprecedented surge of violence in the city of Peel—a sign of the deep roots ethnic-Punjabi gangs have grown.
Evidence also exists of growing ties between transnational drug cartels and ethnic-Punjabi gangsters. Last month, Indian-origin Gurpreet Singh Randhawa was held in what was described as the largest-ever bust of a drug lab in Canada, which is alleged to supply markets as far away as Australia. Gang leaders like Rajesh are thought to have close ties to drug cartels operating in Latin America.
“The 2003 case should have served as a warning of what was building up,” a law-enforcement officer familiar with ethnic-Punjabi gang violence told ThePrint, “but no one really cared back then. There are still bigger fish to fry, like narcotics cartels from Mexico or Colombia. America doesn’t wake up until after there’s a crisis.”
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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Punjab is a cesspool. Cringeworthy music, stupid popstars, widespread drug addiction, glorification of violence and gun culture.
Punjabi culture has putrefied over the last five decades and the stench us hard to bear.