The United States has charged Lawrence Bishnoi, the imprisoned head of an Indian criminal gang, and his North American deputy, Satinderjeet Singh, also known as Goldy Brar, with directing the 2023 murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. A federal indictment unsealed in Los Angeles alleges that Bishnoi ordered the shooting from an Indian jail cell using smuggled cellphones, providing a co-conspirator with Nijjar's photograph and multiple addresses. Singh, a childhood friend of Bishnoi, allegedly directed the North American operations of the Lawrence Bishnoi Organized Crime Group.
Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen who campaigned for the creation of Khalistan, an independent Sikh homeland carved out of India, was shot outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia, on June 18, 2023. New Delhi had designated Nijjar as a terrorist. While Canadian police arrested and charged four Indian nationals over the killing in May 2024, the US indictment does not name the alleged shooters as defendants, referring to them only as co-conspirators.
The assassination triggered a diplomatic crisis between Ottawa and New Delhi after then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cited credible allegations linking Indian government agents to the murder, a claim New Delhi rejected as absurd. However, the US indictment does not allege any Indian government role in the killing, and US officials at a press conference in Los Angeles did not allege that the Indian government was involved in or aware of the operation.
These charges are part of a broader investigation by US and Canadian authorities that charged 37 defendants tied to three India-based organized crime groups with racketeering, extortion, and drug trafficking. Relations between Ottawa and New Delhi have since thawed under Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who visited India in February and opened talks on a trade deal expected to be completed by November. This approach has drawn criticism from some Sikh groups who accuse Ottawa of failing to safeguard Sikh Canadians from transnational repression.