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From Punjab campus to Jodhpur prison: How Lawrence Bishnoi's path led him to Salman Khan
Lawrence Bishnoi's 35-page confession to the Delhi Police in 2020 offers a glimpse into how a chain of events brought him face to face with the actor.
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A stay in Jodhpur jail and a court date that put him in the same complex as Salman Khan. Two inflection points months apart in 2017-2018 turned Lawrence Bishnoi into one of India’s most dreaded gangsters.
His 35-page confession to the Delhi Police in 2020 offers a glimpse into these events—and how one led to the other, bringing him face to face with Bollywood superstar Khan.
From a violent period of campus politics in Punjab to his introduction to organised crime in Rajasthan and imprisonment in Jodhpur (where he met members of the Bishnoi community), multiple threads in his story led to the moment when his dramatic threat to Khan on camera catapulted him into the limelight in the winter of 2018.
The Delhi Police's confession statement does not explain how Bishnoi developed an interest in the case involving Khan, who was undergoing trial for the illegal killing of two protected blackbucks in a village near Jodhpur in 1998. The Bishnoi community considers the blackbuck a sacred animal.
Police officers who have questioned Bishnoi in the past suspect that conversations with community members inside Jodhpur jail, months before his first public threat to Khan, may have prompted him to take up what he saw as the cause of his people. His stint in Jodhpur jail coincided with the final stages of the proceedings in the blackbuck case at the local court. Officials believe that in the echo chambers of the jail and in the town, where Khan’s arrival had created a buzz, the blackbuck trial had a deep impact on Bishnoi.
New connections
Bishnoi's statement claims he enrolled in Panjab University's law department in late 2007 (he would have been 15 then; the confession does not mention when he cleared his Class 12 exams, mandatory for college admission). By 2010, he had been held multiple times for campus violence. And by 2014, he was linked to two murders; both were fallouts of student politics. Police were on his heels. There were multiple cases against him. The window was closing. Bishnoi had one option: he fled to Rajasthan.
After reaching Jaipur in early 2014, he got help from a friend, Ravinder Punia, who covered his expenses. “He stayed there for three-four months,” according to the confession, which also mentions that Punia introduced him to a liquor shop owner, Amandeep.
Amandeep is central to the story because he helped Bishnoi find his footing in Rajasthan; he was the one who helped Bishnoi take the next big leap from campus politics to the world of organised crime. His death would set off a chain of events that changed the gangster’s life.
In May-June 2014, Bishnoi had his first encounter with the Rajasthan Police when he and his associates fired shots at personnel who had stopped them. Bishnoi was caught and sent to Sikar jail. There, he made new connections in Rajasthan's criminal network. Later, the Punjab Police took him in for murder.
He continued building his network from Ropar jail. At that point, he was just a Punjab-based gangster with a few cases in Haryana and one in Rajasthan (the attack on the police team).
Later in 2014, Amandeep was murdered by the liquor mafia in Rajasthan. Bishnoi called for revenge. Between 2014 and 2015, Bishnoi and his aides murdered three men for their alleged involvement in Amandeep's killing.
Police officers who questioned him believe he forged more alliances in Rajasthan during this period.
The chance encounter
By 2017, Bishnoi had emerged as a known gangster with associates across several states. Sometime early that year, Bishnoi (he was in Faridkot jail in Punjab) was contacted by two men in Jodhpur to attack the house of a prominent doctor and demand protection money.
The event could be billed as one of the most significant one behind his rise, as this would eventually take him to Jodhpur, where he would meet members of the Bishnoi community in prison.
“…the accused Lawrence Bishnoi on the saying of his two associates...made a plan to demand ransom from a doctor [name withheld], who has chain of several hospitals in Rajasthan,” the confession statement said. It added that the doctor came under attack, and ₹1 crore in protection money was paid.
Jodhpur Police arrested Bishnoi in August 2017. He was sent to Jodhpur Central Jail, where he met his community members behind the bars.
A Delhi Police officer, who did not want to be named, said: "We can only guess that in prison, everyone must have discussed Khan’s case, which fascinated Bishnoi to take up the cause…A second theory is he wanted to make a name in Mumbai underworld by targeting Bollywood...he found a perfect plan: using Salman Khan's name."
Soon after, Bishnoi was transferred to the high-security Ajmer jail after officials in Jodhpur found he was using cell phones to run his operations.
From Ajmer, he allegedly planned the murder of a Jodhpur businessman, Vasudev Irani, on September 17; the Rajasthan Police arrested him again in that case even as he was in jail.
Bishnoi's stay in Jodhpur jail for the Irani case, this time between late-September and November that year, was critical. The Jodhpur court was hearing Khan's blackbuck case during this time.
According to police records, sometime in December 2017, he was taken into custody and transferred to Faridkot jail (the reason for this transfer is unclear), only to be brought back to Jodhpur for a hearing in the Irani murder case.
Cut to January 4, 2018. Khan too had come to the court for the closing arguments in the blackbuck case. Journalists covering Khan’s hearing were about to get a bigger story: Bishnoi’s first public threat to Khan on camera.
The confession documents say: “Lawrence Bishnoi was arrested in the murder case of Vashudev Irani and brought to Jodhpur where he was produced in court. While coming out of the court Salman Khan had also arrived for a hearing in the same court whom the accused Lawrence Bishnoi threatened to kill because Salman Khan had hunted blackbuck and was not receiving punishment from the court, which greatly hurt the Bishnoi community.”
That afternoon, when he threatened Khan in front of reporters, he was no longer a small-time gang leader. He was Lawrence Bishnoi, the leader of a criminal network that now operates across continents.
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