Murderous Indian terror gangs used California as a cash register while trafficking guns and drugs: feds

A sprawling global web of gangsters targeted in a massive federal takedown used California as its cash register to rake in millions of dollars through extortion schemes, contract killings, and drug and gun trafficking, authorities revealed.Local and federal officials on Tuesday arrested 11 accused members of transnational, India-based gangs and their affiliates in the Golden State as part of a case dubbed “Operation Hard Ball.”Los Angeles’ top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, described the gangs as the most powerful you’ve never heard of, allegedly reaping millions of dollars in illegal profits from drug deals, extortion, weapons sales and theft.“These criminal organizations have engaged in widespread violence, including targeted killings, extortions and kidnappings,” and “flooded communities around the country with massive quantities of cocaine and methamphetamine,” Essayli said.Court documents in the case exposed the grip the India-based organized crime syndicates allegedly have on California, even with their bosses operating from jail cells thousands of miles away. The feared Bishnoi gang founded by Lawrence Bishnoi, who remains locked in an Indian prison, used Whatsapp to direct the movements of hundreds of pounds of drugs across California and extort victims from LA and Thousand Oaks, court documents show.“Using contraband cellphones and other… devices smuggled into his jail cell, defendant Bishnoi personally directed political assassinations, murders, shootings, extortions, kidnappings, drug trafficking, human smuggling, and other crimes,” the documents say.The gang is accused of stealing about 1,150 pounds of cocaine from rival drug dealing outfits in the greater LA area between March 2024 and July 2025.Bishnoi allegedly used his California underlings to do other dirty work in the state, authorities said.One Bishnoi lieutenant, Rajan Bhatti, is accused of using terrifying threats in an attempt to extort $200,000 from an undercover fed...