Poser at Lawrence Bishnoi’s village: How is it possible to kill a politician from high-security jail?

To a query on the locked house, a relative from a village in Punjab’s Abohar district told The Indian Express over telephone, “His family has been shuffling from here (Dootaranwali) to his Bua’s (paternal aunt’s) house in Hisar because of his father (Lovinder Bishnoi) since March this year… he is quite unwell. He has a serious liver condition and, frankly, it does not seem like he will make it this time.”

Stating that the family had stayed with the aunt and her husband, a former Information Bureau employee, “the last time too”, the relative adds, “They had come back (to Dotaranwali) for some time, but went back after his (the father’s) condition worsened. Their house has been locked since then.” Claiming that law enforcement agencies are using Lawrence as a “scapegoat”, the relative adds, “Every time a big incident happens, they (police) blame him (Lawrence) without any proof. When this (Siddique assassination on October 12 in Mumbai) happened, navratras were on. He (Lawrence) would not even think of doing something like that during such an auspicious time.”

At Dootaranwali, the residents seem to think on similar lines. On Lawrence’s name cropping up in the Siddique assassination investigation, they say, “How can someone order the assassination of a politician from inside a high-security prison?” Lawrence, who has been in jail since 2014, after his first encounter with the police on the way to Rajasthan’s Salasar Balaji Temple, is at present lodged in Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati Central Jail.

For the past two years, the gangster has consistently hit headlines: whether it was for the murder of Punjabi singer Shubhdeep Singh Sidhu, popularly called Sidhu Moosewala, on June 6, 2022, in Mansa district or the repeated threats to actor Salman Khan over his purported shooting of a blackbuck, an antelope species revered by the Bishnoi community, during the shooting of Hum Saath Saath Hain in Rajasthan in 1998. Over a span of 17 years — and in spite of Lawrence’s decade-long incarceration — security agencies say his gang has grown steadily.

Back in Dootaranwali, two of Lawrence’s childhood friends nudge the gangster’s cousin Ramesh Bishnoi, 50, to speak to The Indian Express. Sitting on a khaat (cot) under a banyan tree, Ramesh terms as “baseless” the Gujarat Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) charge of Lawrence using drugs to fund terror activities.

“To save the village youth from drug addiction, he would give them cricket kits. He liked to play cricket and ride horses. He never even tried to interfere in the panchayat elections in his own village. How can he then be called a gangster? Everything was fine till he left to study in Chandigarh in 2007. He lost a students’ union election there but that loss brought him on the radar of some politicians, who used him for their own benefit,” claims Ramesh. A village elder  seemingly agreed with Ramesh. “Anyone commits a crime and blames Lawrence for it, affecting both the name and reputation of his family and the village. No one stops to wonder how he can commit such crimes from the various jails that he has been lodged in,” the resident says. Ramesh says their family has “always been wealthy”. He says, “Lawrence’s father has 110 acres of ancestral land. Lawrence wore expensive clothes and shoes. I was surprised when Moosewala’s father questioned Lawrence’s expensive footwear in police custody. Even now, his family spends Rs 35-40 lakh annually on him in jail.”