Lawrence Bishnoi
close to the Shiromani Akali Dal, formed a gang that also had links with criminals in Uttar Pradesh and even Pakistan.
He faced extortion and kidnapping charges in UP and was also accused of smuggling arms from Pakistan. He planned the abduction of a diamond trader in faraway Karnataka, where he was arrested. He escaped from jail and was killed in Chandigarh in 2006.
His aide, Jaswinder Singh Rocky, a former PU student leader, stepped in to form his own group with Jaipal, Shera Khuban and Gounder.
But they were soon at war with each other. Khuban was killed by police in 2012. It was widely held that Rocky, who by then joined politics and unsuccessfully contested the assembly election from his home town of Fazilka, gave him away. Four years later, Rocky was killed allegedly by Jaipal and his aides to avenge Khuban’s death. Lawrence Bishnoi and Rupinder Gandhi are two other PU student leaders-turned-gangsters. While Gandhi was killed by police, Bishnoi is lodged in a Jodhpur jail.
The students bodies set up by them – the Gandhi Group, the Students Organisation of Panjab University (Bishnoi) –participate in university polls every year. Most of these youngsters, many of them sportsmen, were propelled into crime by power and an exaggerated sense of manliness, inspector general of police Nilabh Kishore, who led the operation against Gounder, said.
“It’s a slippery slope, and it wasn’t long before they started indulging in extortions, kidnappings and smuggling to make money.”
Gang wars led to revenge killings and there was no end to the vicious cycle.
Lately, the gangs have been flirting with anti-national forces. Ramanjit Singh Romi, an associate of Gounder who is in Hong Kong, has links with Pakistan’s ISI and is also involved in the targeted killings’ of right-wing Hindu leaders in Punjab, say police. But rivalries within the gangs coupled with police action are proving to be their undoing. (Lawrence Bishnoi Gang)
Malwa, Delhi and Rajasthan Highway robberies and contract killing
A former student leader of the Student Organisation of Panjab University (SOPU), he was a student of DAV College in Chandigarh. He is presently lodged in Jodhpur Central Jail in Rajasthan. The gang is involved in highway robberies and contract killings. It also trades in illegal arms. The gangster recently hit the headlines last month for threatening to kill
Bollywood actor Salman Khan.
TOP GANGSTERS KILLED OR CAUGHT