Arrests made during operation targeting India-based gangs

By Chris Woodward
The Center Square

An international crackdown on India-based organized crime gangs has resulted in 24 arrests in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Eleven of the defendants are in California.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced the arrests Tuesday morning in Los Angeles. The arrests were conducted as part of Operation Hard Ball. The operation involved the FBI’s Los Angeles field office and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Authorities said the criminal syndicates are charged with racketeering, murders, shootings, extortion and trafficking narcotics across international borders.

“Transnational criminal gangs who spread fear, drugs, and violence will face the full force of justice and the weight of the federal government,” said Essayli, who discussed the arrests during a televised press conference. Essayli oversees the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

Essayli said investigators believe the syndicates are linked to major international incidents, including the 2023 assassination of a prominent Indian political and religious figure in Canada.

At least two of the defendants managed to run these global criminal operations while imprisoned in India, Essayli said.

Meanwhile, federal, state and local law enforcement seized 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, 1 kilogram of heroin, 12 firearms and $40,000 in cash while executing dozens of search warrants across California, according to Essayli’s office. The search warrants were primarily in Sacramento, with 23 warrants, and Los Angeles, with 11.

One person was arrested in Indiana, along with one other person in Georgia. Three people were arrested in Canada, and one person was arrested in Spain.

Seven other people were already in custody, and another seven remain fugitives. There is a total of 37 defendants indicted, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported.

Essayli said law enforcement is “determined” to target these syndicates.

Operation Hard Ball was a multi-year investigation.

Essayli stressed that it was not a matter of simply arresting what he described as a street dealer or a gang member.

“This is doing what the Department of Justice does best: dismantling organized criminal organizations,” Essayli said. “We go after the leadership, and we take out the entire leadership structure and organizers of these crime groups.”

Authorities said the criminal groups actively terrorized and extorted members of the Indian diaspora community in Southern California. The unidentified victims are in Los Angeles and Thousand Oaks, a Ventura County city just north of Los Angeles.

In another instance, authorities said 22-year-old Gurlal Singh of Stockton, Calif., “threatened” a victim, then provided the victim’s name to a corrupt law enforcement officer in India. This resulted in relatives of the victim being falsely accused of a January 2026 murder in India.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office identified Singh as “an illegal alien from India.”

Meanwhile, cocaine and meth were smuggled every week out of Southern California, using long-haul semi-trucks and commercial farm vehicles carrying narcotics from the region’s cities of Los Angeles, West Covina, Ontario, Fontana and Perris into Canada, according to authorities.

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell also spoke at Tuesday’s press conference. McDonnell said his officers could not have done their job without state, federal, and international law enforcement partners.

“None of us have the resources to be able to do what we’d like to be able to do on our own,” McDonnell told reporters. “But together, it’s a very, very strong presence, and we have the ability to hold people accountable who are using LA as kind of the crossroads of their criminal enterprise, whether it’s drugs, extortion, murder, or other things that have been laid out in this indictment. So it is a team sport, if you will.”