How India-Based Gangs Terrorize CA’s Immigrant Community

from Gagandeep SinghCalMatters

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Last fall, Harsimran Singh was about to bring 15,000 fans to Stockton for an international tournament in the ancient Indian sport of kabaddi.

Then all of a sudden the athletes started dropping out.

They seem to have come up with excuses to avoid the world championship in sports. As president of the American Kabaddi Federation, Singh felt increasingly shaken as the cancellations increased. He began to demand answers.

He learned from athletes and then from law enforcement that someone was threatening players to shape the outcome of the event. They received phone calls from gangsters, many of them imprisoned in Indian jails, who ordered them not to participate and warned of consequences if they defied the orders.

“The players were very scared; if they got a call, they didn’t want to face gangsters. They didn’t want to play because they didn’t want to compromise their own safety and the security of their family,” said Harsimran Singh.

Singh’s tournament scare was not an isolated incident. It was, as he would find out, part of a much larger wave of international threats, extortion and violence directed at Indian and Punjabi Sikhs in California.

The method is simple: a gang member calls a victim and demands money. If they refuse, a criminal network threatens or carries out attacks on their relatives, families or businesses – whether in the United States or back in India.

Over 250,000 Sikhs live in California, the largest population in the US. Like other members of the diaspora, they maintain strong ties to India, with many traveling regularly to visit their families or ancestral homes.

Law enforcement agencies in California say the combination of wealth, close ties and cross-border movement have made them attractive targets for criminal networks with roots in India’s northern and western states of Punjab, Haryana, New Delhi and Rajasthan.

Police in India told CalMatters that the gangs often target “real estate developers, liquor contractors, transporters and local businessmen” — people with higher incomes or assets. “One of the main reasons is the large Indian diaspora in California, which provides a degree of anonymity and social cover,” a spokesman for the Organized Crime Task Force in the Indian state of Haryana said in a written statement.

The FBI’s Sacramento field office began sounding the alarm in early May 2024, urging members of the Indian community in the Central Valley to report similar tremors.

“In recent extortion attempts, the individuals demanded a large sum of money and threatened physical violence or death if the demand was not met,” the FBI said in a statement at the time.

At least two murders in California have been linked to criminal networks targeting people from the Indian diaspora. Two suspected members of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang — described by the FBI as India’s most wanted criminal organization — have been killed in Stockton and Fresno, according to local law enforcement.

San Joaquin County Sheriff Patrick Withrow said the crime pattern doesn’t look like a network with purely domestic roots. “Most of them have an international kind of connection with them that extends to India because the threats are directed at family members and businesses there,” he said.

Withrow explained that the initial requests were deliberately calibrated to avoid provoking a police response. “They usually start with $4,000 to $7,000 — they think that’s a range that someone can pay and still not contact the police,” Withrow said. “Victims’ families sometimes paid, with the understanding that a one-time payment would protect their family and business also in India and the United States.”

It rarely worked out that way. “Most of the time, a few months later, the extortion crew will come back and ask for more money again,” Withrow said.

Withrow said his office has been receiving about two extortion-related cases a month for the past year or two. His office in July arrested eight alleged members of a gang led by Pavitar Preet Singhwho faces firearms, assault and murder charges in India.

India’s most wanted

At the center of the criminal operation is the Lawrence Bishnoi gang, better known as the Bishnoi gang, which has members in India, the United States and Canada.

The leader of the Bishnoi gang, Lawrence Bishnoi, is locked up in an Indian jail, but federal investigators the latest criminal charges say he continued to run his global network of extortion and targeted killings, using encrypted messaging apps, cross-border coordination and a team of US-based associates to extort victims in both countries.

Investigators believe Lawrence Bishnoi has access to smuggled cellphones and is monitoring the criminal activities of Bishnoi’s gang, although Indian authorities have him under arrest.

In December 2023, Lawrence Bishnoi personally contacted a blackmail victim via audio call, according to the FBI, then turned on his camera to confirm his identity to the victim. The victim took a screenshot, rare documentary evidence linking Lawrence Bishnoi directly to an extortion threat.

The FBI found that US-based members and associates of the Bishnoi gang routinely used WhatsApp and Signal to transmit threats and demands to victims in India. “If the victims did not pay, members and associates of the Bishnoi gang arranged for members in India to shoot at the victims, their associates, their homes and their businesses,” the federal agency said in a November indictment of an alleged gang member.

In November 2024, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Anmol Bishnoi — Lawrence Bishnoi’s younger brother — in Nebraska, according to the FBI.

Indian authorities claim he played a central role in two of India’s most sensational murders: the May 2022 assassination of world-renowned Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moose Wala in Punjab and of Baba Sadiq, a prominent politician and former state minister of Maharashtra.

Weeks after Anmol’s arrest, Sunil Yadavan Indian national and suspected member of the Bishnoi gang, was killed in Stockton. in Fresno, Banwari Godara — a suspected associate of Bishnoi’s gang — was fatally shot near a truck repair shop on October 18.

The killings took a transnational turn in January when Indian authorities announced the arrest of four suspects allegedly responsible for the two murders. According to Indian investigatorsthe suspects were members of a gang rivaling Bishnoi’s. Investigators believe the suspects fled the U.S. after the killings. California law enforcement has not announced any arrests or suspects in the killings.

Sacramento County police have linked Indian-based gangs to 20 shootings in the past four years, according to sheriff’s Detective Steve Hernandez.

Law enforcement action continued in 2025 with multiple arrests reported by the FBI and the California Highway Patrol. In April 2025, FBI director Kash Patel faked the arrest by FBI Sacramento of Harpeet Singh, whom Patel described as an alleged terrorist responsible for the attacks in Punjab and also linked to two international terrorist groups.

A California-based Sikh businessman told CalMatters that he received an extortion demand from a Bishnoi gang member based in the Central Valley. The victim has been receiving calls for the past two and a half months, he said on condition of anonymity because of the threats he has faced.

At one point, the gangster demanded $1 million, he said.

“It has had a psychological impact on my life; it has restricted me and I cannot move freely if I have to travel to India,” he said. The man reported the threats to Fresno police and the FBI.

The threats followed the victim to Canada

One of the most recent cases involved Jasmeet Singh, an Indian national who lived in the Stockton and Fresno areas, when he allegedly made a series of threats to a victim who had moved to Canada from India, according to a December indictment in federal court.

The victim kept an Indian phone number after moving to Canada. months later, Jasmeet Singh received that number to unleash a series of threats via phone calls and voicemails, and became enraged after learning the victim had cooperated with Indian law enforcement, the indictment said.

Jasmeet Singh reportedly identified the victim’s vehicle as a white Range Rover, indicating an opportunity for surveillance that spanned international borders.

“You’re going to die in Canada. I’m not even going to leave you in a position to go to India,” Jasmeet Singh told the victim, according to the indictment.

“Go complain to whoever you want, go complain there too. We will kill you there too,” Jasmeet Singh said in a voice message sent the same day.

Although Jasmeet Singh did not directly mention the name of Lawrence Bishnoi’s gang during these alleged calls, the FBI concluded that the nature and context of the threats—particularly references to the victim’s cooperation with law enforcement—indicated Jasmeet Singh’s association with the gang.

The investigation was launched by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who initially flagged Jasmeet Singh’s behavior and shared information with their American counterparts, prompting the FBI investigation.

He was arrested and taken into federal custody in December and is awaiting trial. His next court hearing is in May. His attorney did not respond to CalMatters’ requests for comment.

Naindeep Singh, CEO of Jakara Movementa prominent Sikh advocacy group based in California has described transnational extortion gangs as active in the state for some time.

Many members of the Sikh community “choose to remain silent for fear of reprisals against them, their bodies, their businesses and their loved ones in the United States or India,” Naindeep Singh said.

The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office and the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office acknowledged this underreporting. “We believe there are more crimes taking place than we have records of,” said a spokesman for the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.

Naindeep Singh and other community members reached out to Fresno police and federal agents to raise the alarm about the extortion attempts.

Kabaddi Tournament Security

Back in Stockton, Harsimran Singh sat in his office explaining to a visitor that his world championship was still going ahead.

The sport, part wrestling and part wrestling, has been plagued in recent years by a spate of murders in India involving players and various organized crime groups, although its popularity has grown in California.

Harsimran Singh believes that the Jaggu Bhagwanpuria gang targeted his tournament. Its leader Jagu Bhagwanpura is in jail in India.

“Law enforcement also wanted us to be careful and we had to hire a lot of security and make sure everything went smoothly,” he said.

Police and FBI agents showed up to supplement private security, although Harsimran Singh never made a formal complaint to them.

“We don’t want to be involved in any of these activities that could harm our property or our lives. We would like to avoid that,” said Harsimran Singh.

The guard held out.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.