CBC publishes full Bishnoi gang letter to Abbotsford police

PENTICTON — On Wednesday, CBC published the full text of a letter the Lawrence Bishnoi gang sent Abbotsford police last August, the first time the wording has been made public.Edmonton Police Service Const. Kevin St. Louis had already described it under oath May 28 at an Immigration and Refugee Board hearing. Abbotsford police confirmed they received it in August 2025 and shared it with partners working the national extortion file. What St. Louis had originally paraphrased as “upwards of 1,000” foot soldiers reads, in the exhibit CBC obtained, as “more then 5000 gang members in Canada.”X user Riley Donovan posted a crop of the police exhibit Wednesday morning..The scan sits inside an Edmonton Police Service Organized Crime Branch investigative summary for Project Garter, case file 25-0417645. CBC said it pulled the exhibit through an Access to Information Act request on the IRB file of a Bishnoi associate ordered deported in July..The letter is addressed to “CANADA DEFENCE MINISTER , ARMY AND POLICE.” It is signed “Lawrence gang from INDIA.” The header also names Goldy Brar, Bishnoi’s former lieutenant, and “ALL OUR GANG MEMBERS IN CANADA.”“We are giving you a written warning and challenge we are Indian gang Canada has no guts to stop us is that clear,” it reads, spelling and punctuation as written. “we will rule in CANADA now no one can stop us we are very powerful no other gang bigger then us not even your f*ckin hell angles ( white pigs ).”It claims members “can do shooting for only $1000,” that the writers “have more guns then Canada police have,” and that readers “might see news next day shooting on police station.” It tells “all white pigs community” to leave the country and says every business owner will have to pay “protection money to us it is like TAX,” whether “Indian or white or black.”Police have not adopted those numbers as a headcount. St. Louis’s May testimony treated the letter as a boast about structure and motive, not a verified roster. Abbotsford police spokesperson Sgt. Paul Walker said at the time that Operation Community Shield opened a file on the origin and contents. Walker’s May line still stands: details went to “law enforcement partners engaged in combatting the extortion crisis across Canada.”.Ottawa listed the Bishnoi Gang as a terrorist entity under the Criminal Code on September 29, 2025. Public Safety Canada described it as a transnational criminal organization run from India, present in Canadian diaspora communities, and engaged in murder, shootings, arson, extortion and intimidation. The listing lets police freeze property and gives border officers another ground for inadmissibility.Lawrence Bishnoi has been jailed in India since 2015. Canadian and US investigators say he still directs cells of student-visa and temporary-foreign-worker recruits through lieutenants. CBC’s Wednesday package, drawing on a Canada Border Services Agency “Tactical Guide,” traces growth of those cells from 2023 through late 2025 and records a split last year between Bishnoi and Brar. Brar entered Canada on a 2017 student permit for Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, filed a refugee claim in 2019 that was deemed abandoned in 2022, and is wanted by the FBI on a $50,000 reward after US charges tying him and Bishnoi to the 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey.The Immigration and Refugee Board hearing that produced the letter exhibit concerned Jashandeep Singh, 25, who likewise arrived as a student in December 2022. The board found him inadmissible. Investigators had tied him, through videos and ballistics, to a pink-slide handgun also linked to an extortion shooting at Kap’s Cafe in Surrey..The letter reached Abbotsford in the same summer a wave of extortion shootings and arsons hit South Asian businesses and homes in the Fraser Valley, Alberta and Ontario. Global News reported in May that Abbotsford had recorded no extortion-linked shootings since December 2025. However, Project Garter and partner forces still treat the network as active.The 5,000 figure in the exhibit is five times the number St. Louis put on the record in May. CBC, upon publication of the fully un-redacted letter, did not explain the gap.

CBC publishes full Bishnoi gang letter to Abbotsford police

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