Operation Hard Ball–a law enforcement crackdown carried out by Canadian and U.S. authorities–has done what years of Indian diplomatic messaging sought to prevent: it has placed India’s criminal-security crisis before the world. On July 7, the US Department of Justice announced a multinational crackdown involving law enforcement in the United States, Canada and Europe. Twenty-four defendants were arrested, 11 of them in California. Altogether, 37 defendants were charged across three federal indictments linked to three India-based transnational organised crime formations: the Bishnoi Enterprise, the Bhagwanpuria Enterprise and the Dhanda Network.
This is not a small gang story. Nor should New Delhi be allowed to bury it beneath the sanitised language of routine “law and order.”
The allegations run from assassination, racketeering, targeted killings, shootings and extortion to narcotics trafficking, human smuggling, weapons trafficking and firearms offences. The wider investigation has also led to the seizure of roughly 1,000 kilogrammes of cocaine, one kilogramme of heroin, about $40,000 in cash and a dozen firearms.
The most damaging question for India is also the simplest. How could two alleged criminal bosses run global syndicates while imprisoned in India? The DOJ says Lawrence Bishnoi and Jaggu Bhagwanpuria were accused of directing or leading enterprises with international reach. Bishnoi, according to US prosecutors, projected himself as a patriot, nationalist and religious figure while allegedly using contraband phones and other devices smuggled into his jail cell to direct assassinations, murders, shootings, extortions, kidnappings, drug trafficking, human smuggling and other crimes across borders.
Prosecutors allege that the Bishnoi network used WhatsApp and encrypted applications to extort victims, and cultivated fear among Indian diaspora communities worldwide. Canada had already listed the Bishnoi Gang as a terrorist entity in September 2025, saying it operated primarily out of India, and used murder, shootings, arson, extortion and intimidation to create insecurity in communities with significant diaspora populations. If Canada can recognise the terror dimension, other affected states should at least examine whether similar designations, sanctions, asset freezes and travel bans are now warranted.
The Hardeep Singh Nijjar case gives the matter its sharpest political edge. The US has also charged Bishnoi and Satinderjeet Singh “Goldy Brar” with ordering Nijjar’s June 2023 killing in Surrey, British Columbia, allegedly from an Indian jail cell. That alone should alarm every state that values sovereignty and the safety of its citizens. In a separate US case, Indian national Nikhil Gupta pleaded guilty to plotting the assassination of a US-based Sikh separatist in New York at the direction of an Indian government employee.
This is where New Delhi’s double standard begins to unravel. India routinely presents itself as a victim of cross-border extremism and demands that the world accept its security claims without qualification. A state that lectures others on terrorism must now answer for the violence allegedly exported from its own soil. *