Indian High Commission conveys concern over gangsters operating from Canada

|HT|

India’s High Commission in Ottawa has flagged New Delhi’s concerns to Canada’s foreign ministry that gangsters involved in violent crime in Punjab were operating from the North American country, an official said. “Canada-based radicals and gangsters [are] getting involved in acts of crime in India...[Ottawa has been asked to] take cognisance and take urgent pre-emptive action,” said the official, requesting anonymity.

This comes after the Punjab Police said Goldy Brar, a Canada-based member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang who has 16 cases registered against him in India, was involved in the killing of singer Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, better known as Sidhu Moosewala. The attack on Punjab’s state intelligence unit in Mohali last month, too, was linked to Lakhbir Singh Landa, who lives in Canada and has nearly 20 cases pending against him in India.

Charges against Brar or Landa have not been tested or proven in any court in Canada.

India has multiple extradition requests pending with the Canadian authorities. Officials did not specify the exact number or names but added about 10 of them related to gangsters and three or four to terrorism. The matter was also raised when a National Investigation Agency team visited Ottawa in 2021 and met with Canadian officials. A statement issued then said that discussions were held about collating evidence on several ongoing investigations into cases of terrorism and other serious crimes to bring about successful prosecution of the accused in both India and Canada. The two sides discussed issues related to evidentiary requirements in India and Canada and possible cooperation for capacity building in the police investigation.

Indo-Canadian gangs, comprising mainly people of Punjab origin, especially in and around Vancouver in British Columbia, date back to the early 1990s with the emergence of Bindy Johal, the first major mafioso from the community. Johal, who had a rivalry with the area’s Chinese triads, was, in copybook mafia- style, gunned down on the orders of one of his own lieutenants at a nightclub in downtown Vancouver. Other groups, drawn largely from the Punjabi immigrant community, emerged after Johal’s killing. The Sanghera and Buttar factions were among the most notorious.

While gangsters such as Johal were either born or raised in Canada, their successors are likely to be new immigrants, according to Shinder Purewal, a political science professor at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. The phenomenon has gone from being homegrown to being imported from India, particularly with regard to the narcotics trade.

Purewal said the other major change is while Vancouver and its suburbs were the original fulcra for such gang activity, it has gradually moved east to Ontario, especially the Greater Toronto Area. He added while the Indian links were always present in drug smuggling, they have become more pronounced. Last April, York Regional Police, which lead an investigation involving multiple agencies, announced it “dismantled a large-scale international drug trafficking network that extended to Western Canada, the United States, and India.” Of the 27 arrested, 23 were of Punjabi heritage and 19 residents of Brampton.

In the last two months, at least four men originally from Punjab have been arrested in Brampton alone and charged with offences including connected to firearms.

India has asked Canada to deny visas to gangsters from Punjab. But part of the problem may be that gang members are often connected to the corrupt within the Punjab Police and get the necessary clearance the Canadian missions have for reference, said Purewal, who is also the author of Sikh Ethnonationalism and the Political Economy of Punjab. Extraditions are also difficult and take years. It took 19 years for Malkit Kaur Sidhu and Surjit Singh Badesha to finally be extradited to India in 2019 in connection to the contract killing of 25-year-old Jaswinder Sidhu, who travelled to India in 2000, and eloped with a man her family did not approve of.

Malkiat Singh was the last gangster to the sent back to India 15 years back. He was wanted in India for kidnapping and murder in May 2007.

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