India's Gangster Assassins Are Running Wild
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And sold. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way. It's 8 p.m. on June 18, 2023 in Surrey, British Columbia, a suburb of Vancouver. It's a cool evening, cloudy skies, and worshipers are leaving the city's Guru Nanak Gurdwara, a large whitewashed Sikh temple on the city's south side.

Among them, Hardeep Singh Nizhar, a Canadian national born in the Indian state of Punjab with a straggly salt and pepper beard and gibbous eyes. Husband, a father to two sons and a plumber. But it's not his work on ballcocks or backflows that's won Nizhar notoriety over the years. Outspoken and passionate, he's been instrumental in a Sikh separatist movement that has been pissing off the government of his ancestral home in huge doses.

See, Najjar isn't just any Sikh activist. He's a member of Sikhs for Justice, a US-based group that advocates for an independent state for Sikhs, who make up around 2% of the Indian population. They call this country Khalistan.

And Nizhar has been toiling away for years to bring members of the Sikh diaspora together to call for it, including a 2020 referendum that strained ties between diplomats in Delhi and Ottawa. Indian officials, working under the authoritarian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have labelled Nizhar a terrorist and the quote mastermind of a militant group called the Khalistan Tiger Force that is, they say, a tool of India's sworn enemy, Pakistan.

In Modi's so-called New India, this is no joke. For years, rumours have swirled that Delhi's own spook centre, the Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, has enlisted the help of gangsters and mafia dons to rub out potential terror threats or political dissidents. Nobody doubts that the country's chief spymaster, a man dubbed India's James Bond, has it in him. But the rumours remain just that, for now.

With Sunday prayers over, Nijar strolls across the Gurdwara's parking lot to his black Dodge pickup and inches towards its exit gate. It's Father's Day, and he's keen to get home to his two boys, but they'll never see him alive again.

A white Toyota Camry follows him across the lot. It's been there for an hour. As Najjar reaches the main road, two men run at him on foot holding pistols. It's over in seconds. The gunmen unleash a deafening hail of bullets, 34 of them hitting Najjar. He dies at the wheel. The two men hop in the waiting Camry and they speed away. It was outrageous and it was reprehensible, says a local police chief. Those scars will remain in our community for some time.

It'll take almost a year for Canadian cops to catch up with the killers, but on May 3rd, 2024, authorities announced they've captured three Indian nationals in the city of Edmonton, with a fourth arrest on May 12th. All four men have links to a gang quarterbacked from jail by one of India's most notorious gangsters, a dead-eyed religious fanatic with a deadly track record, who's already been implicated in the murder of Sikh rapper Sudhoor Musiwala.

Before long, links are appearing between gangs and Indian spies in targeted gillians all over the world, from Birmingham, England to New York City. And with Modi on the campaign trail in the world's largest democracy, experts are pleading to take the strongman at his word. Case in point? An April rally in the state of Rajasthan. Today, Modi bellows into a loud hailer. Even India's enemies know, this is Modi, this is the new India.

and this new india he adds comes into your home to kill you welcome to the underworld podcast hello and greetings to the podcast that unravels the turban of global organized crime but in a culturally sensitive way that's respectful and should in no way be cancelled i am sean williams a freelance writer reporter and wannabe photographer in wellington new zealand

And I'm joined not by Danny Gold in New York City because he's off doing his sort of everything is illuminated tour of Slovakia right now. But actually, I'm joined by Dale Isinger, our esteemed editor, musician, artist, writer, polymath. I don't know. What should I call you, Dale? Well, I'm the guy who takes all of the garbage that you and Danny send me and cleans it up into...

Something listenable. I see the comments, people. Listen, when you're saying like, oh, did you record this in a potato? Yes, they do record it into potatoes. And you should hear what it sounds like before I send it out to the world. You're welcome. I'm glad that you could use this platform to push your own filthy propaganda. Anyway, if anybody's children listening desire to be reporters, by the way, send them our way, underworldpodcasts at gmail.com.

And me, Danny, Dale, we'll all make sure that you take that lucrative job in finance instead. Yeah, because you will be unemployable for the rest of your life. Just listen to your parents, kids. Listen to your parents, do drugs. I don't know. Any other good advice?

that's the best advice i can offer um anyway uh some other services that we do here we've got patreon subscribers we've got tons of bonus material actually i've got to get around to doing that bonus romanian story yeah we've got offshoot mini shows from the main feed of course including one on romania that i will actually get around to doing uh we've got interviews with gangsters i think i'm interviewing a guy who brought in one of the biggest shipments of ecstasy into the

and other interesting folks that you will all enjoy listening to and throwing us a bunch of silver. And we're up on all the socials as well. Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, all those lovely places full of good information. And don't forget to click on the follow button on Spotify because it helps us fire off the bailiffs. Anyway, what are you up to this week, Dale? Anything interesting? You know what? Life is good. Just push-ups and podcasts.

Yeah, you guys like when Danny and I are cynical, but I think they always like cynicism, end of level boss. So, yeah, get ready for that. Anyway, so this week's show, which I guess is a little different thematically perhaps from other ones in that I'm actually going to go a bit further than I normally do and suggest that this killing, the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijad that you just heard about, is actually the starting gun being fired for a new era for India.

And something which actually goes back neatly to a couple of things we've covered on the show before. One is the death of Punjabi Sikh rapper Moosey Wallah, which I think people really went crazy for. People loved that episode, which we'll skip over a bit further down the show. But also it's the use of gangsters by governments to carry out targeted killings, which is something Danny did recently with a show about the CIA's Sam Jankana, Santo Traficante, etc.

and a host of other mafia guys in the 60s who Washington got on board to try and kill Fidel Castro. So, yeah, we have a whole bunch of new listeners this month. Hello to them. And definitely go back and listen to that Musiwala episode if you haven't. People loved it. And also, Sean, good for you for wading into an ethnic and political controversy this episode. I'm sure our new listeners who are here to, you know, listen to stories about cartels and Russian mob bosses are super excited. Holy shit.

Yes, it is good to wade into controversy. Maybe I should say something racist as well, because that will get us more listeners, as we all know.

Anyway, yes, I think that is what's happening here, basically, that the government of India is setting up people to get killed by gangsters. And as we're going to learn, Nijar's death is far from a one-off, in that at least one gangster, Lawrence Bishnoi, is doing for India what those guys did back in the day for the states, i.e. offering himself up as this kind of idealistic assassin trying to get off the hook back home by doing a bunch of other stuff at a time when the Indian state is bent on throwing its weight around with folks it deems a national threat.

I think Danny mentioned it in his Moosey Wallace show but fair play to Lawrence Bishnoi I mean fronting it for all Lawrences out there proving that despite the name any Lawrence can make it as a master manipulator and murder so yeah kudos for that Lawrence

Anyway, that's my thesis and like all second-rate unipapers, I'm going to spend the next 40 minutes or so putting my case to you. But don't worry, dear listeners, you get plenty of gang action in the meantime. Now first, let's lay down some of the cast members in this dark drama. You've already heard about Nijar, a man deep into the separatist Khalistan movement who

to carve out a separate state for Sikhs, which if you don't already know, is one of the world's youngest major religions. It came up in the 15th century in Punjab, which at that point was changing hands between Persian and Mughal empires. Sean, have you not read Dianetics? Come on, Scientology, that is a super young religion. Where is Shelley Miscavige? Where is she? Where is Shelley? Why haven't we done a Scientology episode? That would be sick.

let us know by emailing us that you definitely don't want a show about Scientology. Anyway, the Brits then took Punjab in the mid-1800s after a series of brutal battles, Punjab of which part was actually a Sikh empire at the time, then became a frontier of the British Raj, and in 1947 when India gained independence, it was the scene of some of the most violent episodes of partition.

And that's when there was a huge, bloody population transfer between Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims. And you end up with Pakistani Punjab, including the massive city of Lahore on one side of the border, and Indian Punjab, which includes arguably the holiest gudwara in Sikhism, the Golden Temple of Amritsar, on the other side of the border. The Sikh temples are just beautiful places, by the way. If you're in India or Pakistan, definitely seek them out. I'm just getting out of my system, like early doors.

And apparently all these temples have delicious restaurants in the basement that are happy to feed you as well. I don't know if you've experienced that. Yeah.

I have also watched Rick Steves, yes. Anyway, fast forward to the 1980s and the bubbling movement to create a Sikh nation erupts into bloodshed. Thousands are killed in skirmishes between the Indian government and so-called Khalistani separatists. And this peaks in 1984 when India besieges militants holed up in the Golden Temple at the request of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, killing up to 10,000 civilians in the process.

Later that year, Gandhi herself is assassinated by Sikh members of her security detail in Delhi and all the while Punjabi Sikhs are fleeing abroad, especially to Canada, the US and the UK and a network of extremists flourishes abroad.

Then, crucially, on June 23, 1985, Sikh terrorists bomb an Air India passenger jet en route from Montreal to London, destroying the plane over the Atlantic and killing all 329 people on board. This is the worst terror attack in Canadian history, and it was the deadliest aviation attack in the world up until September 11th.

Khalistani separatists have stormed Indian embassies since and last year, so just after that controversial referendum I mentioned in the cold open, Canadian Khalistanis parade in Brampton, which is near Toronto, with a float depicting the 1984 Indira Gandhi assassination. This thing has an effigy of Gandhi in a bloodstained white dress with a poster behind it reading quote, revenge.

So that's about as subtle as one of Danny's late night WhatsApp messages to us about how much he hates Drake and understandably enrages the Indian government. I don't know what Danny has against Drake. He talks about it all the time. It's like one of the only things he talks about. It's crazy. Every day he's talking about this thing he has against Drake. I don't get it. All he talks, all Danny talks about is Drake. It's crazy. Yeah, I think he said that Drake's playing in Slovakia as well. And that's why he's going over to Europe. So good luck to that.

So India's external affairs minister has something to say about this float of Indira Gandhi. Not surprisingly, he says, quote, I think there is a large underlying issue about the space which is given to separatists, to extremists, to people who advocate violence. I mean, incredibly, I couldn't actually find the response to this by a Canadian top brass, which is incredible.

pretty weird I mean it's a pretty clear call to arms against a massive diplomatic ally but yeah I mean they're gonna go pretty hard in this episode that's telling yeah exactly so anyway there's the background to all of this stuff and it's fair to say that the Khalistanis have got some previous on this

But that brings us on to the second of our drama's protagonists. And this is a man by the name of Ajit Deval, a.k.a. India's James Bond. And if that is not a cool nickname, I do not know what is. Deval today is a ripe old 79 years old, but he's never had a role more powerful than the one he's actually in right now and which he's held since 2014. And that is as Narendra Modi's National Security Advisor, basically its senior most spy.

Born in 1945 near the Nepalese border, Davao becomes a cop in the late 60s, but not just any cop, right? He's immediately involved in anti-insurgency operations in Mizoram, which is one of the remote northeastern states that's across from Bangladesh next to Myanmar.

Might be headed there myself soon with any luck. But anyway, importantly, De Waal plays a role in Operation Blue Star, which is the name for the siege of the Golden Temple and the Khalistanis that I just mentioned and which is so, so controversial in India. De Waal then turns his attention to Kashmir and Pakistan and he's widely thought to have gone undercover in Pakistan for six years gathering intel on the insurgency groups there, Kashmir, Afghanistan. That is no mean feat, man.

De Waal terminates no fewer than 15 hijackings between the 70s and 1999. And that year, De Waal, then in his Indian CIA, the Roar, becomes something of a national hero when he prevents the deaths of dozens of passengers aboard an Indian Airlines flight that gets hijacked by Al-Qaeda and ends up landing in Kandahar.

In 2014, De Waal gets 46 Indian nurses released from a hostage situation in Iraq and he squashes an insurgency in another Northeastern state. De Waal is like proper hardcore spy, basically, Le Carre stuff. Although, as you just said, Le Carre makes up shit and this guy does real things.

And he was the youngest police officer to be awarded India's prestigious Kirti Chakra Award for gallantry in 1989. Also an award for gallantry. I think all three of us working on this show deserve that. Yes, podcasting.

But De Waal also has a track record of dipping into the underworld to get his jobs done. So in 2005, he launches an audacious plot to assassinate India's public enemy number one, Dawood Ibrahim. One of our earliest episodes is about Dawood, and he's also the central basis for the main gangster character in Shantaram. You spent some time looking into the new Indian mobsters in India, right? You actually went there recently. I did. I did.

I've been to Mumbai a bunch of times and I did a really interesting story like light years ago about the new dons and how they moved abroad. But basically, I just want to hear you say Dawood again. Dawood Ibrahim.

That's right. I am the whitest man alive, all right? Mate, I mean, you can't hold a torch to Danny's pronunciation. So, yeah. This podcast is supported by FX's English Teacher, a new comedy from executive producers of What We Do in the Shadows and Baskets. English Teacher follows Evan, a teacher in Austin, Texas, who's been a teacher for a

who learns if it's really possible to be your full self at your job, while often finding himself at the intersection of the personal, professional, and political aspects of working at a high school. FX's English Teacher premieres September 2nd on FX.

Stream on Hulu. Well done. That July, Ibrahim's daughter weds the son of a Pakistani cricket legend at Dubai's Grand Hyatt Hotel. Now, Ibrahim is a gangster terrorist by this point, hunted down for his role in a series of deadly Mumbai bomb blasts in 1993. Again, you can listen to that really, really early show from like, I don't know, 2001 or whenever we started this for that episode.

And while Ibrahim is widely known to be protected by Pakistan's security apparatus, he can hardly just come and go to the Middle East at will. But there is no way he's going to miss his daughter's wedding. I mean, imagine if Don Corleone had just stayed in a shag pad watching the Yankees instead of doing that. So Deval hatches a plan and involves another Don called Chota Rajan.

I think I'm going to do a show about him soon. He's really interesting too. Anyway, Ibrahim and Rajan had been brothers in arms for decades until they split over Ibrahim's terror attacks. Naughty Ibrahim, bit too much for Rajan. In 2000, Ibrahim had tried to kill Rajan in a botched assassination in Bangkok.

So, De Waal, the James Bond, he enlists two of Rajan's men to kill Ibrahim in Dubai, training them in weapons use and giving them fake documents for travel to the UAE. Okay, so let me just get this straight. De Waal is the super spy for the Indian government. Dawood Ibrahim is India's top mafia man who is also a terrorist.

And Rajan is his former partner turned mortal enemy. Correct. And I know when I've written a really great paragraph when I get that comment.

This plan to kill Ibrahim would have worked too if it weren't for those pesky cops, Mumbai cops that is, who without realising this is a whole intel op, discover these two Rajan hit men have been in India and that they're allegedly on their way to Dubai to murder a prominent Indian businessman, that's what they believe. Cops then trail the duo to Dubai and arrest them at the Grand Hyatt, much to Duval's disgust.

It's long be said that the plan actually fell through because Ibrahim had guys inside the Mumbai police, which makes sense, but this is contested. It's not really that sure what happened. Anyway, Deval never gets his man. But in recent years, his noise has mirrored that of his authoritarian boss Modi, calling for Indian security to shift from, quote, defence to defensive offence against groups threatening India. I mean, I don't know, is that like gig and pressing or total football?

I'm not really sure of the tactics there, Deval. Okay, I take it back. These have to be some weird English sports terms and that makes you the whitest man alive. Ah, correct. Yeah, I feel like that title might change hands a few times during the course of this episode as I pronounce more Sikh names. Anyway...

Of course, most of this is focused on India's arch nemesis, Pakistan. De Waal's work, that is. And despite Kashmiri violence dying down in recent years, partly due to Indian repression, Islamabad is always looking for ways to attack its neighbour by proxy and vice versa. And remember, De Waal has grown up fighting this Khalistani movement, sometimes illegally, and he's not afraid to use gangsters to carry out operations.

And for a while, the Raw agency's operations are limited to its back garden, South Asia, neighboring countries, mostly Pakistan. In 2014, Modi comes to power, brings in Deval, and Raw goes global. Anyway, you probably know plenty about Modi already.

He's a strong man, he's a Hindu nationalist, Islamophobe, iconoclast and unprecedentedly popular in India. I mean, I'm sure we'll cop a load of shit from the Modi trolls for this but the guy's speeches in Hindi are slipping into full-blown nuts fascism. Take this as a recent example from last month because he's on the campaign trail, right? Quote, Muslims have first rights over resources. They will gather all your wealth and distribute it to those who have more children. They will distribute amongst infiltrators.

Do you think your hard-earned money should be given to infiltrators? Would you accept this? Well, would you, Dale? Would you accept that? No, I don't like infiltrators. Ah, yeah. It's pretty dark stuff. Anyway, yes. Build big stuff. Dick on minorities. Go hard on religion and sport. Erdogan, Orban, Bolsonaro, Modi.

And in 2014, De Waal and the Roar follows Modi. Tons of militants are executed in Pakistan and Kashmir, sometimes using small-time gangsters and Islamists who've been duped into thinking they're carrying out a religious killing. It's pretty ingenious, actually, some of the stuff they've done.

In that same year, 2014, Roar developed such a huge network of informants among Britain's Sikh community that MI5, which is the UK's domestic intelligence agency, delivers warnings to India. In Germany too, Roar spreads its wings, including a husband and wife spy team who are running Sikh events, but who are actually on Delhi's payroll.

New Bollywood movie idea, Mr. and Mrs. Samit. Sean, are you trying to lose us, all our Indian audience? Not me, man. I love India, man. I want to be the one white guy cast in the Bollywood movies. I don't even know what to say to that. I love India. In 2020, Australia expels two raw agents after dismantling what Aussie agents call a, quote, nest of spies, aiming to root out political opposition and trade secrets.

Writes the New York Times, quote, Investigating agencies have been set loose on Mr Modi's political opponents. More than 90% of cases involving politicians over the past decade have involved the opposition. Many languish in jail or the court system. Those who switch allegiance to the BJP, that is Modi's right-wing governing party, find that their cases vanish. So far, so brass-necked.

Then comes Nijar's spectacular killing. That's the scene from the cold open, yeah? That is the scene from the cold open, yeah. Soon after the assassination, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau comes out swinging incredibly hard. Quote, Canadian security agencies have been actively pursuing credible allegations of a potential link between agents of the government of India and the killing of a Canadian citizen.

I mean, that's pretty base for a country's leader, especially when he kept shtum about the Indira Gandhi float. Sean, you're not supposed to say based unless you're 15 and you have one of those broccoli head haircuts.

I do have the haircut. I also honestly don't know what based means. What does based mean, really? I think you used it correctly. It means like radical, dude. All right. It's gnarly. Okay. That's pretty gnarly for Justin Trudeau. I think I would describe Justin Trudeau as gnarly. Actually, yeah. Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Mounties, that is Canada's FBI, also tells reporters he's, quote, investigating connections to the government of India.

And asked if there are any Indian sleeper agents in Canada, this guy also says it's a quote, great question, but he can't say more about it because it's very much at the centre of evidence and ongoing investigation. So...

Yeah, yikes. They think there's something in this. In the months following Nizhar's death, things get even weirder. In September 2023, a 39-year-old Sikh is shot dead at a duplex in the city of Winnipeg. He's said to be a member of a gang in India and he fled to Canada on a false passport in 2017.

just one day before he'd been put on an Indian government list of suspected terrorists associated with the Khalistan Tiger Force, which is a legitimately good name for a terror group, linking him to murders and weapon shipments.

Six weeks later, a 41-year-old Sikh with links to organised crime is shot dead in his car at a suburban shopping area of Edmonton, tragically alongside his 11-year-old son. Nobody is charged in connection with either of these murders, but authorities believe they're connected to the guys they pick up from Nizhar's slaying. And according to cops, they belong to a gang headed by the final key cast member in today's underworld story, Mr Lawrence Bishnoi.

I know Danny's already dived into Bishnoi's life in the Moosey Waller episode, and I'm not above cribbing from his notes for this one either, so I'm going to keep it short and characteristically sweet. Lawrence Bishnoi is born in the early 1990s, either 92 or 93, in a sleepy village in rural Punjab. His family are landowners and he gets a good education, but it's when Bishnoi gets to college at Punjab University that things go downhill.

First off, he gets into 1500 metre running, which is a big red flag. Middle distance runners, that's like weird. And then he gets into bodybuilding, which is also very cool and we love on this show, and forms a little gang with brothers and cousins.

In 2008, Bishnoi's pal runs for student elections and Lawrence shoots his friend's opponent, which is completely normal behaviour. Bishnoi then gets locked up for two months. For shooting someone, you get two months. Yep. And it's there, behind bars, where he meets other crooks and builds his criminal empire.

The friend, by the way, loses his student election and Bishnoi gets out of jail. But this guy loves shooting, can't get enough of shooting, shoots the winning candidate's brother, goes back into the slammer and kind of just repeats this pattern of bouncing between freedom and incarceration, shooting people, of course, running extortion rackets and just generally being a bad guy.

He also gets into bootlegging, which is big business in Punjab, being on the border of alcohol-free Pakistan. We did a whole episode about that a few months ago or years ago or whenever. In 2012, Bishnoi graduates. I mean, like, what?

But one of his cousins is shot dead and he goes on this kind of like dead man's shoes style rampage against everyone involved. In 2014, Bishnoi and his boys open fire on cops at a temple. They get arrested. They head back behind bars and he spends the next three years allegedly plotting revenge on everybody who got him there. But this is important, not Lawrence himself, because when you ram a cop barricade and shoot a bunch of them, it is their fault, guys. It is their fault.

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Tune into new episodes of Conspiracy Theories every Wednesday, free wherever you listen to podcasts. The Indian prison system must work really, really well, as we've just heard, though, because Bishno expands his enterprise yet again at this point. He moves operation into Delhi, India's gigantic capital, 25 million people, and he gets in bed with local mafias and bootleggers, extortionists, other bad guys. And anybody who gets in his way gets mowed down.

writes the print, quote, Bishnoi would call up his associates outside the prison to order hits on rivals, demand ransom from musicians and sports personalities, and make plans to escape from jail for some of his friends. I mean, this is the sort of stuff we want to be doing if we want to make real money. Anyway, just a real venal, psychopathic character all round is our boy Lawrence. And to be fair, all men named Lawrence are exactly the same. He's still only 31, though, at this point.

Proper 30 under 30 material. He has a lot of interest in music and the sport of Kabaddi, which actually Danny described ages ago as being like rugby. And I let him get away with it, but it's not. It's kind of like tag wrestling where you have to hold your breath and chant Kabaddi, Kabaddi, Kabaddi over and over again.

It's completely cool, normal, fun sport. Get involved, guys, at your local Kabaddi center, wherever that is. By the time Nijar is killed in Canada, Bishnoi is reported to have around 700 hitmen operating worldwide, including the prime suspect in Rapa Musiwala's assassination in May 2022.

Moosey Waller not coincidentally long alleged to be a supporter of the Khalistani movement. Remember that guy killed in his Winnipeg duplex that I just mentioned? Lawrence Bishnoi has claimed responsibility for it, calling it retaliation for another gang hit in India. I

Oh, and guess whose gang the four guys picked up over Nizhar's death belong to? Yes, Lawrence Bishnoi. They'd been living in Canada on student visas. No, none of them had actually done any studies, which I think is completely fine and fair. At first, India says that Canada is trying to drag it into a gang rivalry.

But for the biggest clues the men were actually acting for Raw and the Indian government, let's hop across the border to the United States, particularly New York City, where you are, the Big Apple, the really coolest place on Earth, the best city in the planet and of all time. Hey, I'm podcasting here. Because at exactly the same time the JAR was being shot in that Surrey parking lot, fed

Federal agents were unpicking a near identical murder for hire plot in the States. This time the target is a Khalistani activist named, oh shit, Gurpatwant Singh Pannon. I'll be taking no notes on pronunciation and I'll delete all emails before I even read them. And his attempted killer is an Indian resident called Nikhil Gupta, who is a known narco and weapons trafficker.

Now, this one is juicy as hell, so hold on to your butts. In spring last year, an Indian government intelligence official called Vikram Yadav reaches out to Gupta, the narco, with an offer. Take out the activist and we'll erase a looming criminal case against you back home.

Gupta says yes. Then to do the job, he reaches out to one of his drug trafficking associates. Only this guy is actually a DEA informant working a separate undercover case against Colombian narcos. Whoops. Within weeks, Yadav assures Gupta his case back home is taken care of, telling him, quote, nobody will ever bother you again.

Gupta then goes ahead with his plan and hires a hitman from his drug associate, who, of course, is the DEA agent. God, that rules. That's all so much. Yeah, it's such a good story. It's just so much trampling on each other's feet. I wouldn't expect anything less from these wizards over at the DEA. Yes, absolutely.

This thing progresses and it becomes increasingly black and white that Gupta is being used by Raw to wipe Akala Stani out on India's behalf. Now, the state official, Yadav, tells Gupta, for example, that the hit shouldn't be carried out during a June state visit of Modi to the White House.

He also tells Gupta that the activist is just one of, quote, so many targets, adding that Nizhar in Canada is number three or four on the list. Now if Panun, the activist, is in a meeting with other people, Yadav adds, just put everyone down.

Gupta's hitman quotes him at $100,000 for the job and he hands over a $15,000 down payment. Here's the Washington Post quote. At one point, the indictment said, US agents even got footage of Gupta turning his camera towards three men dressed in business attire sitting around a conference room. An apparent reference to Indian operatives overseeing the mission. We are all counting on you, Gupta told the purported assassin on the video call, according to the indictment.

Gupta is in India by the time the DEA tells its undercover agent to just wrap this whole damn thing up in that voice exactly. So to draw him out, they get his initial narco guy, the informant, to tell him to meet in the Czech capital city of Prague. When Gupta lands, Czech cops pounce and throw him in a car and he's driven around town for hours while US agents grill him. He's currently waiting on an extradition request.

The White House, meanwhile, has been desperate to cover this thing up. It gets Yadav listed as an unnamed co-conspirator in the case, and it warns the Modi government that the Post is about to publish a big story on the piece without telling the journalists themselves. Remember, this is all like crazy, sensitive stuff. As much as targeted killings on the US saw a big no-no, the US is desperate to get close to India as a bulwark against Chinese influence in Asia.

And despite Modi turning into something of a despot, the Biden administration has been courting him as keenly as Martha from Baby Reindeer. Yes, that is a contemporary reference to culture. Yadav is also implicated in the chance killing, by the way. Here's the post again. Quote,

That India would pursue lethal operations in North America has stunned Western security officials. In some ways, however, it reflects a profound shift in geopolitics. After years of being treated as a second-tier player, India sees itself as a rising force in a new era of global competition, one that even the United States cannot afford to alienate. Asked why India would risk attempting an assassination on US soil, a Western security official said, because they knew they could get away with it.

British officials now think Raw may have been involved in the death of a Sikh activist there in 2023, just three days before Najjar's death in Canada.

The evidence that India is dipping into gang wars to kill Sikh separatists is pretty damning at this point. What's perhaps even more interesting is that just as Sam Jankana and Santo Traficanta did in the 60s with Castro, Lawrence Bishnoi appears to be offering himself up for these operations just right out there in public as a sort of right-wing thief in law. Bishnoi has never made any secret of the fact he's a devout Hindu and he belongs to this kind of

really niche cult that reveres the Indian antelope or black buck as it's called as a sacred animal and therefore untouchable that's fucking awesome yeah it is

In 2018, a Bishnoi gang hitman said that Lawrence had told him to kill Bollywood star Salman Khan for shooting two black bucks in 1998. This April, five members of the gang were arrested for firing at Khan's home in Mumbai. I mean, this guy, he called it a grudge. That's awesome. Last year, Bishnoi gave a TV interview from prison, which experts believe is his attempt to rebrand himself from gangster to Hindu nationalist warrior.

I am a nationalist, he said. Oh my God. He's just like, he's trying to get Modi to like let him out. Yeah, exactly. He said, I'm against Khalistan. I'm against Pakistan. He's like, please, please pick me. He's like the ultimate pick me guy. He's the pick me guy. Anyway, some of the, he's the pick me guy. Some have even said he's trying to get his sentences reduced by killing agitators on foreign soil, something American mobsters have done for decades.

Anyway, in countless other countries, of course, MI6, Mossad, the KGB, the ISI in Pakistan, they've all used criminals to carry out assassinations. So this is not just an Indian thing. This is good for gangsters, of course, because they might get state cover or even the odd quash conviction. And it's good for the spooks, too, because they get a layer of deniability.

The Foreign Minister of India has already proven this by saying the Jars' killing was gangsters killing gangsters. And he's even been posturing telling Canada, I told you so, essentially, for letting in all these Sikh separatist wrong-uns. But, and here's the CBC, quote, the Indian government has not covered its tracks very well because while the shooters are indeed alleged gang members, if you follow up the line, up the chain of command, you quite quickly do get into Indian officials.

So there you have it, guys. A dastardly tale of death, drugs, spies, and Sikh militants just in time for the Indian election, which Narendra Modi is almost certain to win, and about 10 minutes after Trump got indicted for sending a bunch of money to a porn star. So all is good in the world. That's nuts, man. I mean, what is going to happen? Are they going to send him to prison? Are they actually going to send him down? I don't know, but he can just say, I'm a nationalist, and then they'll let him out.

Famously, Trump loves black bucks. He can't get enough of black bucks. Tune in next week for another mad tale from the global underworld. And again, hit that Spotify follow button to bump us up the rankings and allow us to keep doing this thing that Dale loves so dearly. Hey, I actually do love it, despite... Despite all evidence to the contrary.

For years. No, but I appreciate the listeners. Don't forget to go to patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. Sean, this was a lot of fun. I learned a lot about the Indian underworld and about myself. Thank you. Oh, that's really kind. And that's a wildly optimistic tone to take at the end of one of these shows when Danny is usually about to slip a noose over his neck. Anyway, yes. Tune in next week. See you later, guys. We love you.

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