Goldy Brar: A Thug’s Life

IT WAS SOMETIME in 2012 that an 18-year-old college student from Sri Muktsar Sahib in Punjab was booked in a criminal case involving a clash between two groups. It would be one of the earliest brushes with the law for Satinderjeet Singh, now more popularly known as Goldy Brar. A decade later, Brar is a dreaded gangster whose involvement in a string of mur­ders and extortion cases in India has made him a wanted man, both in India and Canada, where it is believed he is currently based, and has even led to an Interpol notice against his name. The Centre has now gone a step further and declared him a terrorist. The 2019 amendments to the Unlawful Activi­ties (Prevention) Act (UAPA) permit the government to charge individuals, and not just organisations as was previously the case, as terrorists.

Brar’s rise in crime mirrors the growth in gangland violence and extortion rackets in Punjab. The son of a policeman, Brar was still a college student, when he is said to have become close to Lawrence Bishnoi, another infamous gangster who heads what is referred to as the Bishnoi gang and is currently incarcerated in Tihar Jail. Bishnoi, the son of a well-to-do farmer in Abohar, who had moved to Chandigarh to pursue higher education like Brar, was getting involved in student politics, which in Punjab has tended to attract a lot of criminal elements, and some political patronage even from established parties. There are reports of Brar and Bishnoi engaging in violence—much of that fights, and even alleged murder attempts, connected with rivalries in student politics—even before 2012. According to one news article, when Brar stood for a student body election, Bishnoi fired at a rival candidate, got arrested, and then, once out on bail, shot the relative of the candidate who eventually won to avenge Brar’s defeat.

Their activities soon extended beyond the realms of student politics. Stints in jail, according to the police, were only deepening their networks among the underworld. Soon they were running their own extortion racket, taking on contract killings, and ordering hits on rival gang members, across Punjab and other parts of northern India. According to some media reports, they have as many as 700 shooters working for them. Brar’s father Shamsher Singh, an assistant sub-inspector of police (ASI) in Punjab’s Muktsar district, took premature retirement from his service some years ago. There have been rumours of even his involvement in these rackets, allegedly carrying out surveillance work for his son. In Tihar Jail now, Bishnoi is known to be in touch with his associates outside, and has even ordered hit jobs. Brar moved to Canada on a student visa in 2017, from where he is said to run the Bishnoi gang.

The infamy of Brar and Bishnoi would have been limited to Punjab but for the sensational murder of popular Punjabi musician Sidhu Moose Wala in 2022, which Brar claimed he had ordered on social media. Brar, in fact, often makes admissions of ordering such hits online, and sometimes even gives interviews, which probably adds to his notoriety and makes his extortion enterprise more profitable.

The rise of gangsters like Brar also shows challenges the police force faces. Distant places like Canada with a large diaspora can become conducive spaces from where criminal syndicates in India are run. Indian jails, flooded with mobile phones, are also places from where crimes are planned. Weapons are also getting more sophisticated and can easily be moved across borders, sometimes even dropped by drones. The government’s notification designating Brar a terrorist mentions his involvement in the “smuggling of high-grade arms, ammunitions and explosive materials through drones from across the border and supplying thereon for carrying out killings”. Many gangsters also communicate with one another using apps like Signal or calling via the internet, making it hard for the police to intercept these.

Brar is nowhere close to being arrested but designating him a terrorist is the first step in making it less easy for him to operate from abroad.

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