Karamveer Singh, alleged Bishnoi gang member facing murder charge in India, fights deportation

Canada's Minister of Public Safety is fighting to keep an alleged member of India's Bishnoi gang in custody while he contests deportation efforts. Karamveer Singh faces a murder charge in India and is suspected of involvement in criminal activity in the United States.

According to documents obtained by reporters, FBI reports claim gang leader Lawrence Bishnoi personally tasked Singh with "the responsibility to care for his brother Anmol" in California before Singh fled to Canada in 2025 after being denied immigration status in the U.S.

Photographs in the federal court file place Singh — who absconded from India in 2019 while on bail in relation to a 2012 murder — alongside Anmol Bishnoi and Lakhvinder "Lakha" Kumar, another senior member of the gang, at a residence northeast of San Francisco in 2024. Both Anmol Bishnoi and Kumar have since been deported to India where they face multiple criminal charges.

Singh, who has been in Canadian immigration custody since April, is also suspected of ordering a shooting and arson attack at the Victoria-area home of Punjabi singer AP Dhillon in 2024.

On Friday, lawyers for the Minister of Public Safety will be in Federal Court arguing to keep Singh in custody while he fights the government's deportation efforts. The government says Singh's documented links to the Bishnoi group — designated a terrorist entity — pose a danger to the Canadian public.

"Given his past criminality and documented links to the Bishnoi group, a designated terrorist entity, [Singh]'s danger to the public needs to be offset by reasonable conditions of release," the government said in a last-minute application filed last week.

The Minister of Public Safety wants to overturn an Immigration and Refugee Board order issued July 7 that would have released Singh on electronic monitoring under virtual house arrest, after his two sisters posted bonds worth a combined $110,000. A federal court judge put a short-term pause on the order after the government filed an urgent request.

Lawrence Bishnoi and his associates face a sweeping indictment in the U.S. accusing them of conspiring to commit extortion, drug trafficking, and the assassination of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, B.C., in June 2023. Bishnoi has been in jail in India since 2015.