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Murders of Malik, Moose Wala put spotlight back on Punjabi gangs in Canada

The police in Canada have issued a public warning identifying 11 men, of whom nine are of Punjab origin, linked to extreme levels of gang violence.

Updated on: Aug 4, 2022, 16:49:13 IST
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The murder of Punjabi singer Sidhu Moose Wala in May followed by the killing of Ripudaman Singh Malik, a 75-year-old Sikh man acquitted in the tragic 1985 Air India Kanishka terrorist bombing case, brought the spotlight back on Punjabi gangs active in Canada. With Goldy Brar, a gangster who travelled to the country on a student visa in 2017, claiming responsibility for the killing of Moose Wala, Indo-Canadian gangs are once again under the scanner. Brar is a close aide of gangster Lawrence Bishnoi, who is the chief suspect in the singer's murder.

Four Punjab origin gangsters on Vancouver police list. (Vancouver Police Department)
Four Punjab origin gangsters on Vancouver police list. (Vancouver Police Department)

It is on record that Gurpatwant Pannun, founder of the banned Sikh for Justice (SFJ), openly assured legal protection to the killers of Moose Wala and still no action has been initiated against either Brar or Pannun. In Malik's murder case, Tanner Fox, 21, and Jose Lopez, 23, have been charged with first-degree homicide. Malik was shot dead in Surrey, British Columbia on June 15.

Punjabi youths have earned distinction in topping the list of criminals and gangsters, a report suggests. The police in Canada have issued a public warning identifying 11 men, of whom nine are of Punjab origin, linked to extreme levels of gang violence. The Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit of British Columbia (CFSEU-BC) along with Vancouver Police and BC Royal Canadian Mounted Police issued the public warning. Punjabi-Canadian criminal gangs are formed in a community based in Canada and are primarily made up of young individuals of Punjabi ethnic origin.

The fact that these hardcore gangsters have been working in cahoots with radical organisations, which are carrying out terror operations and killings in Punjab besides making extortion calls, makes things more complicated and difficult for the law-enforcement agencies in India as getting them extradited to India to face legal action is the most tedious task.

Little support from Canada, UK and other western countries

India’s efforts to seek their deportation to India despite furnishing tangible proof to the Canadian authorities have barely borne any fruit.

Canada, the UK and other western countries give two hoots to India’s demand to return to India the criminals responsible for carrying out terror activities in India with the standard excuse of "lack of sufficient proof". It took India close to two decades to have two persons, a woman and her brother, of Punjab origin extradited from Canada for "(dis)honour killing" of a girl.

The Canadian government has failed to carry out a proper investigation and trial into the first worst bombing in aviation history when Air India’s Kanishka bombing took place in 1985, killing 329 people mid-air.

Canada’s reluctance to take action against Khalistanis is seen as a ‘vote-bank politics’, given a huge ‘election funding’ by Sikhs.

It has been pointed out that terror organisations such as Sikhs for Justice, Gurpatwant Pannun and Hardeep Singh Nijjer have been allegedly executing anti-India activities with impunity from Canada with no perceivable action.

There has been alleged misuse of religious platforms to promote anti-India activities in western countries including Canada. Control by Khalistani-gangsters nexus of Dashmesh Darbar Gurdwara in Surrey, Guru Nanak Sikh Temple in Surrey and Dixie Gurdwara in Brampton are some of the evidence.

Ripudaman Malik's killing

Recently, the police claimed the involvement of gangster-turned-terrorist Arsh Dalla among others in the broad daylight killing of Ripudaman Malik. Though the authorities arrested the killers, they refused to share the links, motive and details of the masterminds of the killing.

The Canadian authorities have also, so far, failed to take cognisance of the fact that Malik was being hackled, trolled, threatened and abused by Hardeep Nijjer, a henchman of Pannun, and Moninder Boyle, another hardliner Khalistani who till recently was in control of Dashmesh Darbar Gurdwara in Surrey.

A video grab of Hardeep Nijjer with an AK assault rifle in Surrey, Canada.

The authorities have also not yet initiated any action against other suspects in Malik’s murder, namely Gurvinder Singh Dhaliwal, a close aide of Nijjer, Gurpreet Singh Sahota, a TV host at Channel Punjabi which is owned by hardcore Khalistani Pary Dullay, Ranjit Singh Khalsa aka Kala, in charge of a Khalistani gurdwara at Abbotsford.

The name of journalist Gurpreet Singh, husband of NDP MLA from British Columbia Rachna Singh, also figures as a provocateur against Malik. Moninder Boyle had written a threatening letter to Sri Akal Takht Jathedar Harpreet Singh leading to the cancellation of the latter’s visit to Malik in Vancouver.

Killers of kabaddi player Sandeep Singh continue to live in Brampton unfettered.

Following Malik’s killing, multiple incidents of a deadly gang war between Punjabis have taken place in the British Columbia area that goes to show the failure of authorities to control and name kingpins.

A prominent Sikh preacher, Baljit Singh Daduwal who is also the president of the Haryana Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (HSGMC), has called out the terror outfit ‘Sikhs for Justice’ for misguiding Sikh youths, especially baptised ones, against India.

Daduwal has appealed to the Sikh youths to stay away from dollar dreams shown by a secessionist organisation in the name of Khalistan. Daduwal said many Sikh families were suffering because their children were getting lured by payment of a few hundred to thousand dollars and promise of a job made by a US-based secessionist organisation in exchange for hosting Khalistan flags or painting its slogans.

He said, “it is tragic that Sikh, mainly Amritdhari youths, have got swayed by these promises and end up in jail. They are not even getting bail. Many youths have been in jail for over two years. Many recently approached me for relief. The organisation that got this unlawful work done didn’t even pay them.”

ISI activities in Canada

It is also an open secret that Pakistan’s ISI has its presence in entire Canada in large numbers. The spy agency is known for working in close coordination with anti-India and Khalistani elements by providing them with all sorts of aid and advice.

It is a well-known fact that Canadian authorities have never questioned the disruptive and objectionable activities of the ISI being carried out from Canada.

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta

Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.

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