Ludhiana: Punjab Police have launched an investigation after a former business owner, now unemployed, received a death threat and a Rs-10-lakh extortion demand from a caller claiming to be a member of the Lawrence Bishnoi gang.Sarabha Nagar police registered a first-information report (FIR) following a complaint from Gurpreet Singh, 43, a resident of Baba Nand Singh Nagar in Ayali Kalan. The investigators have claimed that Gurpreet Singh received a WhatsApp call from an international number on Friday. While the call disconnected initially, it was followed by a series of messages demanding the payment and threatening to shoot his family if he failed to comply.
Sub-inspector Guljinder Singh, station house officer at Sarabha Nagar, said: “The caller spoke in Hindi and claimed to be associated with the Lawrence Bishnoi group.” The Bishnoi gang is one of India’s most feared criminal syndicates, frequently linked to high-profile assassinations and cross-border extortion rackets.Possible ‘Random’ TargetWhile the threats were severe, authorities noted discrepancies that suggest the caller may not have been intimately familiar with the victim’s life. The caller threatened to shoot Gurpreet Singh’s son, which is strange, since police have confirmed that Gurpreet Singh lives with his wife and parents but has no children. Even his financial status is no longer strong. Previously he operated a water bottling plant, but the business folded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, he is unemployed. “All this makes us believe this could be a random extortion call,” sub-inspector Guljinder Singh said, noting that the caller’s lack of accurate personal information is a key lead in the investigation.Police have officially booked the unidentified suspect under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) sections 308 (4) (extortion) and 351 (2) (criminal intimidation). Cyber-security experts and local police are currently tracing the digital footprint of the WhatsApp messages to identify the origin of the international number
