Who is Lawrence Bishnoi, the ghostlike ex-policeman’s son now at the head of a violent and growing global gang?

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“He’s basically run a transnational criminal empire from inside a high-security Indian prison, and that is something that should be reminiscent of Pablo Escobar,” said Robert Huish, a professor of international development studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax, comparing Bishnoi to the infamous Colombian narco.

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“After he graduated, the violent activities, and the boldness of political intimidation in particular, became part of his brand,” Huish said.

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With his handsome, brooding looks, verbal prowess and keen fashion sense, Bishnoi’s pronouncements and provocations from prison fuelled recruitment, and stories of killings, threats and attacks linked to him and his followers became enormously popular media fodder in India and within the Indian expat communities. Many of the attacks were acknowledged and boasted of in social media.

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Bishnoi threatened politicians and beefed with rappers and other gangsters, and afterwards many of his verbal targets were attacked, some fatally.

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“In public, Bishnoi projected an image of himself as a ‘patriot,’ ‘nationalist,’ and deeply religious individual through social media posts and interviews with news organizations and used this public image to recruit members and associates to his crime syndicate in India, the United States, and elsewhere,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement.

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“In private, Bishnoi presided over a sweeping criminal enterprise that spanned multiple continents. Using contraband cellphones and other voice-over internet protocol devices smuggled into his jail cell, Bishnoi personally directed political assassinations, murders, shootings, extortions, kidnappings, drug trafficking, human smuggling, and other crimes committed by members and associates of the Bishnoi enterprise worldwide.”

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U.S. authorities allege that Bishnoi was at the top of the hierarchy of a sprawling organization, with underbosses managing day-to-day operations in different parts of the world.

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Satinderjeet Singh, 32, better known as Goldy Brar, also from India’s Punjab, is accused in a U.S. indictment of being the North American leader of the Bishnoi enterprise. He was a childhood friend of Bishnoi’s and an associate from their university days, before Brar moved to Canada. Rohit Godara, 37, also known as Guru, of Rajasthan, India, is named as Bishnoi’s European leader, and Sukhraj Singh Kang, 58, as a leader remaining in India.

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According to the indictment, Bishnoi empowered Brar and Godara to speak for him while he was jailed and to direct Bishnoi’s soldiers worldwide.

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Canadian officials — from the federal government down to local mayors and police chiefs — have been enraged for years by waves of violent extortions pinned on the Bishnoi gang, primarily targeting South Asian expats in B.C., Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta.

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Canada was not alone.

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The U.S. indictment claims the Lawrence Bishnoi Organized Crime Group (OCG) ”used violence to cultivate a climate of fear, in particular in India and among Indian diaspora communities outside of India, that the Bishnoi OCG exploited to extort victims around the world. These acts of violence included political assassinations, murders, shootings, kidnappings, maimings, and assaults.”

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While extortion was profitable, it doesn’t seem to have been enough. Befitting a man of Bishnoi’s past, his ambition and confidence seems boundless and his many claimed, alleged, and suspected crimes appear to have a broad mix of motivations: financial, religious, political and personal.

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That unusual profile has led to his current predicament.

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The U.S. indictment accuses Bishnoi and Brar of ordering the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who was ambushed by gunmen as he left a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C.. The assassination seemed deeply political: Nijjar, a Canadian citizen, was an outspoken critic of the Indian government and a leader in the Khalistan movement, which seeks to create an independent homeland for Sikhs in India’s Punjab region.