Now Reading: Report says Bishnoi gang exploited Canadian student visa system
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Report says Bishnoi gang exploited Canadian student visa system
A classified Canada Border Services Agency report says the Lawrence Bishnoi gang used student visas and work permits to build a criminal network in Canada. Global News, which reported on the findings,…
The Story in Brief
A classified Canada Border Services Agency report says the Lawrence Bishnoi gang used student visas and work permits to build a criminal network in Canada. Global News, which reported on the findings, said the gang carried out extortion, shootings, murders and other organised crimes across British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario. It allegedly recruited Indian youth and initially targeted Khalistan supporters and businessmen before expanding threats to other Indian-origin communities.
The report said 2,418 Indian students faced charges in 2024, out of 188,125 Indian students in Canada that year. Between 2019 and 2023, 4,000 Indian citizens on study permits were charged with 17,929 offences, including 4,920 classified as serious or organised crime-related. Canada designated the Bishnoi gang a terrorist entity in September 2025.
The Indian Opinion
The lazy narrative that Indian students as a group are a crime threat ignores the report’s own denominator: those charged in 2024 represented just over 1 per cent of Indian students. The opposite claim, that visa misuse is merely a political scare story, also fails if organised gangs recruited students and exploited weak enforcement. Canada needs transparent data separating charges from convictions, visa categories and serious offences. The clearest test will be whether future removals and prosecutions target proven offenders without turning nationality into evidence of guilt.
Source: newindianexpress.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
