Patrick Grandy, the assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles field office, said that 11 people were arrested in California, one in Indiana, one in Georgia, one in Spain and three in Vancouver, British Columbia. Several others facing charges were already in custody, but the authorities were still searching for additional gang members who were indicted.
The arrests, he said, dismantled vast criminal organizations that had “terrorized families, exploited communities and stolen lives through ruthless acts of violence in the United States and abroad.”
“They prey on people here in the U.S. who still have ties back in India,” said Bill Essayli, the top prosecutor in the Los Angeles-based U.S. attorney’s office. One of the defendants, he said, was a police chief in India who was accused of participating in a scheme to extort $400,000 from a Los Angeles family by falsely charging their relatives in India with murder until they agreed to pay.
Federal authorities said the investigation began in response to rising violence in communities associated with the Indian diaspora, particularly in Canada, Europe and the United States. The lead prosecutor, Declan T. Conroy, said that hundreds of law enforcement officers had been involved.
“This has been years in the making,” Mr. Conroy said.
In one particularly high-profile incident, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, a Sikh nationalist leader from India’s Punjab state, was shot and killed in June 2023 at a temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia, southeast of Vancouver. Three months later, citing international intelligence, Justin Trudeau, then Canada’s prime minister, accused India of orchestrating the brazen killing.
