In the Indian state of Punjab, the presence of gangsters can be felt everywhere. Small-town hustlers smuggle liquor and extort businesses for cash, while criminal overlords run guns and drugs – and even control Punjab’s film and music industries. Yet one figure looms above them all.
Lawrence Bishnoi, who hails from a small village in Punjab, is now widely regarded as India’s most feared mob boss. And although he has been in prison for the past nine years, Bishnoi’s enterprise has grown from a small-time racket on a Punjabi university campus to a national – and even international – criminal network, which in recent years has been linked to some of the most high-profile killings in India and beyond.
