Brussels, July 18 (IANS) India’s cooperation with international agencies in combating transnational crime is rooted in its commitments under international law. After ratifying the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC) and its three protocols in 2011, New Delhi accepted obligations to tackle human trafficking, migrant smuggling, and the illicit manufacture and trafficking of firearms.
The commitment reflects New Delhi’s consistent doctrine of treating human trafficking, illegal migration networks, narcotics trafficking, arms smuggling, forged documentation, and narco-terror links as interconnected security threats rather than isolated crimes, a report has stated.
“The US Justice Department’s ‘Operation Hard Ball’, announced on July 7, is being read across capitals as a demonstration of what coordinated enforcement can achieve against organised crime that respects no border. As many as 24 arrests across the United States, Canada, and Europe, more than 50 search warrants, three unsealed indictments, and 37 charged defendants, drawn from syndicates that recruit and kill across continents, mark one of the largest joint actions against criminal enterprises,” a report in the European Times mentioned this week.
For New Delhi, the report said, the importance of the case extends beyond the number of arrests. The networks under investigation were reportedly based in India, initially targeted Indian victims, and cannot be fully dismantled without India’s cooperation. This places India at the heart of the operation rather than on its periphery.
“The indictments describe the criminal enterprises led by the jailed Punjab gangster Lawrence Bishnoi and Jaggu Bhagwanpuria, alongside the Canada-based network of Ravinder Singh Dhanda, as sprawling operations running murder for hire, extortion, weapons trafficking, and the movement of bulk narcotics across several continents. The Bhagwanpuria group alone is said to count more than a thousand members and associates worldwide, directing extortion through encrypted messaging and running its affairs with contraband phones smuggled into prison,” European Times mentioned.
The report noted that India had confronted these criminal outfits well before they emerged as a concern in cities such as Los Angeles and Vancouver. It added that the gangs have carried out several high-profile targeted killings across different parts of India.
“The Bishnoi organisation and its associate Satinderjeet Singh, known as Goldy Brar, claimed the assassination of the singer Sidhu Moose Wala in Punjab in May 2022. The same network has been linked to the killing of the Maharashtra politician Baba Siddique in Mumbai in October 2024 and to a sustained campaign of threats against prominent public figures. Therefore, India brings to any joint effort a body of knowledge on these syndicates, their personnel, their financing, and their prison-run command structures that few partners can match,” the report detailed.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Ottawa acknowledged New Delhi’s cooperation in the investigation, with prosecutors indicating authorities from the United States, Canada, Spain and India are expected to maintain close coordination as the cases progress.
–IANS
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