A convicted member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang testified at his deportation hearing on Thursday that he was paid $4,000 to open fire on a house on Vancouver Island.
Abjeet Kingra told the Immigration and Refugee Board a co-worker at a Winnipeg moving company recruited him to shoot the B.C. home of Punjabi singer A.P. Dhillon.
“He told me that no one should be at home, and you just need to fire outside the house, and you will get money,” Kingra, an Indian citizen, testified at his hearing.
Asked why the co-worker, also an Indian citizen, offered the contract to him, Kingra replied, “I don’t know, maybe I am an idiot, that’s why.”
“I’m not that much intelligent,” he said.
The Canada Border Services Agency has asked the Refugee Board to order Kingra’s deportation on the grounds he is member of a criminal organization, the Bishnoi group.
He is one of the first alleged Bishnoi members to face a public deportation hearing amid a crackdown on extortion crimes targeting South Asian Canadians.
The case is part of Canada’s response to the epidemic of extortions that have spread fear in cities with large South Asian populations, particularly in B.C., Alberta, Winnipeg and Ontario.
Testifying by phone from the prison where he is held in Mission, B.C., Kingra offered a glimpse into the workings of extortion gangs.
As a witness, Kingra displayed remarkable memory lapses, responding to many questions posed by the CBSA with, “I don’t remember.”
He denied being a Bishnoi member.
But like many extortion gang members, he said he came to Canada from India on a student visa in 2018 and worked a variety of jobs in B.C. and Manitoba.
He said that when a friend, Vikram Sharma, asked him to carry out the shooting, he did not initially agree, but after pondering the matter for a few days, he decided to do it.
He said he did it for money. “Because I thought I would be able to help my family back home in India because my job wasn’t going well here.”
The two of them drove from Winnipeg to Vancouver Island. They first scouted Dhillon’s house and then returned later in the evening.
After Sharma used gasoline to torch the vehicles in the driveway, Kingra fired 14 bullets at the home. Kingra used a phone to record a video of the shooting.
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He said Sharma told him to make the video because “only with the proof you can get money.” He said he didn’t know how the video found its way to the Bishnoi gang, which posted it online when it took responsibility for the incident.
He denied knowing the Bishnoi group was behind the shooting until he heard news reports the next day, and saw the video he had recorded.
“Even I was surprised that it was everywhere on the news channels in the morning,” he said. “I made the video because he [Sharma] said, ‘I will set the fire and my hands won’t be free.’”
He also denied knowing who asked Sharma to conduct the shooting, where he got his gun, how long they took to drive across Canada and where they stayed.
Sharma fled Canada following the shooting and is wanted by the RCMP. Kingra is serving a six-year sentence and awaiting trial for an August 2024 shooting in Surrey, B.C.
The judge who sentenced Kingra found he had done the shooting “at the behest of a criminal organization known as the Bishnoi gang.”
Dhillon was targeted because someone who had appeared in one of his music videos have “fallen afoul of this organization,” the judge wrote.
As police have stepped up their efforts against the gangs, they have come across hundreds of suspects who should not be in Canada.
The cases have been referred to the CBSA, which said that as of May 7, it had opened 446 investigations and issued 118 removal orders.
Fifty-five suspects had been expelled from Canada, the CBSA said. A handful of more serious cases have been sent for deportation hearings, among them Kingra.
The gang is headed by Lawrence Bishnoi, a crime boss who has managed to run his organization despite having been imprisoned in India since 2015.
Along with his lieutenant in Canada, Goldy Brar, Bishnoi recruited Indian youths to extort money, often from Canadian Sikh business owners and entertainers.
To underscore the seriousness of their threats, Bishnoi members typically drive to the homes of their victims at night, shoot at them and set fire to their properties.
As Global News first reported, the Bishnoi gang brazenly sent a letter to a B.C. police station last August claiming it had 1,000 foot soldiers willing to carry out shootings.
Adding to the crisis, the Indian government has used the Bishnoi gang to advance its interests in Canada through violence, the RCMP has alleged.
As part of its fight against Canadian Sikhs who support independence for India’s Punjab, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government allegedly hired Bishnoi.
At India’s behest, the gang arranged for local members to kill Hardeep Singh Nijjar, president of a Sikh temple in Surrey, B.C., on June 18, 2023.
Nijjar was a leader of the Khalistan movement, which is a thorn in India’s side for advocating the independence of Punjab.
A second assassination planned by the Indian prime minister’s intelligence wing was disrupted by the United States. The target was also a Canadian.
Although the RCMP took the unusual step of warning the public about India’s role in violence, Prime Minister Mark Carney has re-engaged with Modi.
In response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war, Carney has sought expanded trade with India, as with Canada’s other top foreign interference adversary, China.
India’s actions are part of a trend in which foreign states are hiring organized crime groups to conduct political assassinations in Western countries.
Canadian Sikh groups are concerned that Carney is neglecting their security concerns as he looks to Asia for new export markets amid White House hostility.
On Wednesday, Carney congratulated Modi on X for becoming India’s longest-serving prime minister, and spoke of a renewed Canada-India partnership.
On May 1, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service reported that India remained one of the “main perpetrators of foreign interference and espionage against Canada.”
Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca