‘Lawrence is karma’: the gangster who became an icon of Modi’s India
This Guardian Long Read profiles Lawrence Bishnoi, India's most notorious gangster, who has orchestrated high-profile murders and international assassinations from inside a high-security prison. The article explores how Bishnoi rose from a privileged rural background through violent student politics to become a celebrity criminal icon in Modi's India, allegedly with links to the Indian government's covert operations targeting Sikh separatists abroad.
Summary
The article, written by Atul Dev, begins by describing the family home of Lawrence Bishnoi in Duttarawali, a border village in northwestern India, establishing the atmosphere of fear and deference that surrounds him. At just 33 years old, Bishnoi is described as India's most notorious gangster, having orchestrated several high-profile killings — including the murder of Punjabi rapper Sidhu Moosewala and politician Baba Siddiqui — entirely from within a high-security prison in New Delhi, where he has been incarcerated for over a decade awaiting trial on dozens of charges.
The article situates Bishnoi's rise within the broader context of Modi's India, describing a country experiencing widespread sectarian violence, Hindu nationalist consolidation, institutional impunity, and a failure to create jobs for its vast young population. In this environment, Bishnoi has become a role model for millions of angry young men who see lawfulness as futile. The mainstream press has celebrated him as a 'Hindu don,' emphasizing his vegetarian diet, celibate lifestyle, and religious tattoos, while a streaming platform has announced a documentary series on his life.
Bishnoi was born into a wealthy landowning family and named after a British colonial officer. He grew up within the Bishnoi religious community, which holds a deep commitment to environmentalism and the protection of wildlife. A formative grievance for him was the case of Bollywood star Salman Khan, who was accused of hunting black bucks — animals sacred to the Bishnoi community — in 1998. This case, which has dragged through courts for decades, became a personal obsession for Lawrence, who has threatened Khan and placed him on a hit list, demanding a formal apology at a religious temple as the price of his safety.
Bishnoi's criminal career began at Punjab University in Chandigarh, where he enrolled to study law in 2010. The article argues that he felt displaced and status-less in the cosmopolitan city, and was drawn into the violent world of student politics under the mentorship of gangster-politician Vicky Midukhera. By the time he won his student council election, he had accumulated multiple criminal cases. After a series of escalating crimes and a dramatic escape from police custody, he was re-arrested in 2014 and has remained incarcerated ever since, with the Modi government using preventive detention laws to hold him indefinitely without completed trials.
The article's most explosive section deals with allegations made by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that Bishnoi's gang was used by the Indian government — directed from the highest levels, allegedly including Home Minister Amit Shah — to carry out violence against Sikh separatist dissidents on Canadian and American soil, including the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Vancouver. The Indian government denied all allegations, but current and former Indian intelligence officials interviewed for the piece offered more ambiguous responses, with one former RAW officer stating, 'We can do this now because we have the influence to get away with it.' Notably, the Indian government's own investigative agencies have simultaneously charged Bishnoi with working *for* the same Sikh separatists he is accused of terrorizing, highlighting the contradictions in official narratives.
The article concludes with vivid street-level reporting from Jaipur, where the author drinks with former college friends — men trapped between visible wealth and economic stagnation. They speak of Bishnoi with admiration, invoking him as 'karma,' a divine agent of Hindu morality. One friend emotionally gestures at glittering billboards for luxury brands and declares he must 'seize them somehow,' encapsulating the desperate aspirational nihilism that Bishnoi has come to represent for a generation of young Indian men.
Key Insights
- The author argues that Bishnoi's ability to orchestrate murders from inside a high-security prison — including international killings — represents something qualitatively new in Indian crime, distinct from fugitive gangsters of previous eras like Dawood Ibrahim.
- The article claims that Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau publicly named Bishnoi as a conduit through which the Indian government directed violence against Sikh dissidents on Canadian soil, with allegations pointing to Home Minister Amit Shah as the architect.
- A former RAW officer told the author that India could conduct covert foreign operations because, as a major economy and US ally on China's border, 'we have the influence to be able to get away with it' — framing plausible deniability as a geopolitical privilege.
- The author observes a striking contradiction in Indian state narratives: government agencies simultaneously accuse Bishnoi of working for Sikh separatists and of being a Hindu nationalist warrior, revealing the incoherence of official legal framing around him.
- The article argues that the Indian mainstream press has deliberately cultivated Bishnoi's image as a 'Hindu don' — emphasizing his vegetarianism, celibacy, and religious tattoos — transforming a criminal into a nationalist icon whose targets are perceived enemies of Hindu India.
- A lawyer outside Bishnoi's Delhi legal office described Bishnoi not as a gangster but as 'karma,' arguing that his victims — a corrupt politician, a gangster-rapper, Sikh separatists, and Salman Khan — all deserved what they got, illustrating how Bishnoi has been morally laundered in popular consciousness.
- The author observes that Bishnoi's rise is inseparable from India's failure to create jobs for its youth, with the drinking circle in Jaipur — men stuck between visible luxury and economic stagnation — treating Bishnoi's violent seizure of power as an aspirational model rather than a cautionary tale.
- Former Intelligence Bureau special director A.S. Dulat told the author that during his tenure, operations of the kind Canada alleged could not have been approved without the Prime Minister's direct knowledge, implicitly distancing Vajpayee-era norms from the current Modi government's conduct.
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