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April, 1994 in Vancouver. Canadian news show. In the studio is Bindi Johal, a hulking guy clad in a leather jacket with gelled hair. And he's got some things to say about the infamous Jimmy Dosan.
Jimmy is a gang leader, well, was a gang leader, in the metro Vancouver area with a particularly vicious group of drug-dealing Indo-Canadian Sikhs that became known as the Punjabi Mafia. Two months earlier, he was shot to death in an alleyway. The murder has never been solved, but everyone knows Bindi and his crew did it. Tension has been building for a while. Bindi used to serve as an enforcer for Jimmy and his brother Ron, as well as deal coke for them.
Jimmy was the muscle, Ron was the brains. But Jimmy got locked up for killing a Colombian drug dealer in 1991, and Bindi started doing his own thing while he was awaiting trial. The brothers eventually got off on the charges a few years later when a witness recanted, surprise, surprise. And they weren't a fan of Bindi, their former lieutenant, now running his own crew.
Bindi, meanwhile, didn't like that the Dosanjas were always taking hits out on people and not doing the dirty work themselves. And it just so happens that they take a hit out on him. But Bindi convinces the hitman to double-cross Jimmy. Jimmy shows up to this alleyway, and he gets gunned down. Now it's a few months later. Bindi's in the news studio, and they're asking him about Jimmy's murder. He tells the news presenter, quote, This Jimmy Dosanj, he portrayed him as a hitman, this, that. I guess he was a very serious person.
From what I've seen of him on the street, I don't think he could hit his way out of a paper bag. The new show isn't finished yet, though. They've also got some footage from Rondo Sanj, a hefty bearded 20-something in a turban. He's got a message for Bindi. Quote, Bindi, I'm here and I'm bad-mouthing you, buddy. If anybody's a nobody, buddy, it's you. Maybe that's why your life isn't worth a loonie on the streets. I wouldn't shoot you in the back. I'd do it face-to-face, square in the forehead."
I mean, don't get me wrong, these guys are very vicious, brutal gang lords, but that's some of the most Canadian death threats I've ever heard in my entire life. And this is all on the news, like, you know, the 5 o'clock hour. A couple of weeks later, Ron is gunned down in his car at a traffic light in broad daylight with an AK-47. Everybody knows Bindi did it. And he's basically a celebrity in the city at this point. All up in the nightclubs with flashy jewelry, popping bottles.
These rash of murders, though, would set off gang wars in the Vancouver area's Indo-Canadian Sikh community that are still reverberating more than 25 years later. A community that's seen approximately 150 to 200 young men killed as various drug-dealing gangs have fought bloody battles in nightclubs and bars, with crews often splitting up as best friends turn on each other with deadly consequences.
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Welcome back to the Underworld Podcast, where we teach you that it ain't all poutine and hockey up north. I am Danny Golds. I'm here, as always, with Sean Williams. And we are both journalists that have worked all over the world. And now we bring you stories about organized crime from all over the world.
As always, bonus episodes at patreon.com slash the underworld podcast, where for $5, you get even more content. Great interviews. Captagon expert Caroline Rose is just on there. Or, you know, if you just want to support us for $3 a month, also scripts, sources, all that. There's also merch on our website, underworldpod.com. What else? Let me think. I actually had to do this one quick because I'm on assignment this week for a while. I think, Sean, so are you, yeah? Yeah, I'm off to Sicily to report on the mafia. What else? Can't wait.
Berlin's cold. I'm cold. Need to get out and interview folks. Interviews are fun. Also, great intro, but I've got questions. I mean, what the hell is a loonie? A loonie is a Canadian dollar. No. Really? What? Yeah, man. Yeah. Anyway, Canada, bro, Canada, it gets crazy in Canada. And
And people are always asking us to do Canadian episodes, and I want to, and I know about the Rizzuto family and the bikers in Quebec, and a little bit about all the Toronto gangs, RIP Rob Ford, gang, gang. But, you know, I had no idea Vancouver was so violent and out of control. And there's a really fascinating dynamic there with the Indo-Canadian community, sort of caused by Bindi Johal when it comes down to it, who, you know, for the most part, this community is extremely educated, successful, upstanding citizens, but
But they have this small undercurrent of gang life that's just really wild and unique, so much so that there's been like academic papers written about it. Yeah. And wasn't there some like insane Vancouver serial killer who fed women to pigs? And I think is BC weed still a bigger thing as when I had long hair and a backpack?
I don't know about this serial killer, but yeah, B.C. Weed. And actually, B.C. Bud figures into this story a bit, and we're going to get into it. So let's get into it. Cool. First, though, I want to say we used a wide range of sources on this. There's a really good Medium article, of all places, by someone named Samuel Kerr. But there's a Vancouver-based crime reporter, Kim Bolin, who...
has just done extraordinary work on the gang wars there for Vancouver Sun for, I mean, decades. She's just a total old school crime reporter, knows all the gangsters. They all know her. I mean, she's been on a hit list and probably a lot of this wouldn't be known without her. So we want to make sure that we give her her
for due credit. And now Vancouver and Surrey, which is a city in the suburbs where a lot of these gangsters, especially the Indo-Canadians are from, it doesn't have the same sort of historical gang violence as a city in the US like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, LA. The really bad violence, the tons of gunfire, that's all relatively new really in the last 30 years. They did have the early Chinatown gangs with the opium, you know, and then the zoot suitors, things
things like that. And then you had the emergence of some dangerous Chinatown gangs, usually made up of Hong Kong Chinese or Vietnamese in the 70s and 80s, like the Red Eagles and the Lotus Gang, which had triad connections.
These gangs, they mostly used knives and pipes and had brawls. There really wasn't a lot of insane gunfire, not a lot of firearms. In the 80s, I found this really interesting because it's kind of unique. You had the emergence of multi-ethnic gangs, especially after a lot of Central American refugees came to Vancouver after having stopped over in LA first and gotten a taste of gang life. That's when a group called Los Diablos formed, which we will get to in a little.
You know, it's very Canadian, right? This sort of coming together. And there's a Vancouver-based gang we'll eventually do an episode on called the United Nations because of their makeup. I'm surprised Trudeau hasn't used them for one of his campaigns, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, I don't think you want to be associated with them as a politician. But here's some just real Canadian shit. Quote, the East Van Saints formed in 1987 from a group of young men who played on the same hockey team.
This was one of the first non-ethnically based gangs in BC. Members were Italian, Portuguese, East Indian, Chinese, Cambodian, and Filipino. They were predominantly formed out of a hatred of and competition with the Los Diablos. And that's from a paper called Vancouver Violence, a Historical Analysis. I just, I mean, I love a gang in Canada formed from the players of like a recreational hockey team, you know? Yeah, amazing.
You also had motorcycle gangs like the Hells Angels and some Russian organized crime around then. Drive-bys start happening in 1989, and that's when guns and murder start really taking off. But it doesn't really take off until our man Bindi Johal starts making a name for himself.
He's born in India in Punjab in 1971, and his family immigrates to Vancouver in 1975 when he's four years old. I've seen some different reports on his childhood. Some say his mom was a secretary and his dad was a mill worker and he had an average middle class childhood until high school. Some say his dad wasn't in the picture and he was working class and had problems with violence and authority from a very young age. All agree that by high school, he had a rep and had joined up in Los Diablos through a guy named Faisal Deen.
He actually gets expelled from his high school for beating the crap out of a vice principal, like kicking him in the groin so hard he had to be hospitalized, which just does not sound pleasant. After he was called in to discuss his gang affiliation and he gets arrested and does a short stint in jail. Yeah, that's very Nelson Muntz. I'm not really getting the Kingpin vibe just yet, but he doesn't sound like a nice guy. It is very Nelson Muntz.
Bindi is also arrested at some point for smashing up car windows with a baseball bat in a school parking lot. You know, he was known to get in a lot of bar fights. You know, he's just this big hulking dude. But he actually was said to be a very smart student who even attended college for a semester. It's not a semester and a half at Seton Hall or anything, but, you know, still. Well, I mean, according to the non-American card, what's Seton Hall?
It's a Sopranos reference because whenever Tony talks about how smart he is, he always mentions how he did a semester and a half at Seton Hall. Oh, shit. Okay, cool. Got it. Sopranos deep cut, baby. Sopranos deep cut.
So the Diablos, they were street-level dealers. They used to be mostly Hispanic, but at this time, they're mostly South Asian. The Dos Anjos brothers from the intro, they were the bosses of Los Diablos at this point. Mid-level cocaine dealers, they get the package, they chop it up, they give to some of their guys to sell retail, they sell it on the streets.
Said Joe Hall in court, quote, I was a small-time drug dealer. He was a big-time guy. Wherever we went, we got respect because everyone was afraid of him. He was a big shot, and when I was beside him, I was a big shot. At this point, the brothers and their crew are morphing into what became known as the Punjabi Mafia.
So yeah, I mean, we're going to have to do some background on Indo-Canadians, Sikhs, Punjab, all that. And I'm going to go into it a bit, but I always say this, if you really want to get deep into this and have a good understanding of it, like read books, do not listen to podcasts. Don't listen to me. You know, do your own research with this kind of thing because there's not a lot I can cover without this becoming, I don't know, kind of boring. So some
Some of this, by the way, is taken from a 2020 academic paper called The Legacies of Bindi Johal, The Contemporary Folk Devil or Sympathetic Hero. Just to give you some idea of how this dude and what he represents is talked about. And my experience with Sikhs, honestly...
is mainly going to a temple in Queens after a bad terrorist attack against them, Sikh temple in the Midwest, because, you know, since they wear turbans, they're often targeted by all sorts of racist assholes. And everyone was like super friendly and they fed me and it ruled. Actually, I had this period of like going to all sorts of religious ceremonies, even though, you know, I'm a steadfast member of the tribe. I went to like a Japanese Buddhist thing with a friend, a Sufi ceremony. It's just really interesting to attend these ceremonies. Like I dig all the chanting, different groups. Yeah, it's cool.
Yeah, I definitely recommend it to people. People are super friendly in general. There's even a Hindu temple in Flushing like I still go to because they have a canteen in the basement that has amazing food. Anyway, do that kind of thing. It rules. Also Sikhs, I mean, a lot of people know that they have these cool bracelets they have to wear and daggers they have to carry, turbans as well. But actually, I'm just going to quote from that paper.
Sikhism was founded in the 16th century northern India as a distinct religion from majority Hindu and Muslim population. While living relatively peacefully, Sikh warriors emerged in the 17th century to fight against the reigning Mughal Empire and their often violent campaigns of forced conversions to Islam. This signified the transformation of Sikhs from a passive and relatively peaceful religion to that of the religious warrior or soldier.
The image of the warrior Sikh became an important symbol and has been appropriated by some when perceived cultural and religious threats arise. In fact, the lower mainland of British Columbia is unique in that the very image of the warrior Sikh has become a part of that region's history and the source of two moral panics, one over terrorism and the other over gangs. So the terrorism thing...
It has to do with something called the Khalistani movement, which was Sikhs advocating for a separate state in Punjab state, India, because they were a marginalized group. This is, I think, in the 70s and 80s. And it led to violence and attacks by both the government of India and Sikh groups, including the assassination of Indira Gandhi and brutal retaliations against the Sikh community because of that.
This is also a quote from a 2002 article in the Canadian magazine Maclean's by an author named Renu Bakshi. Renu Bakshi, who was essentially taking his community to task because he felt like the violence wasn't being addressed enough. Quote, five centuries ago, Guru Nanak founded Sikhism, a religion designed to promote equality among people. Although it evolved into a warrior religion, it was intended to uphold bravery in the face of evil.
But the very essence of Sikhism, its spiritual struggle for human rights, has been perverted by misguided men bent on gaining power and exacting revenge. The Sikh teaching, when all else fails, only then raise your sword, no longer applies to defending the defenseless. It's an excuse to use violence to settle the score. Yeah, I mean, that...
That seems a little strong to me. I mean, especially given how persecuted Sikhs have been by Hindus in India and Muslims. And then there's the Amritsar massacre in 1919, killed over a thousand people and carried out by, yeah, you guessed it, us, the British. One of my best pals back home is a Sikh, so she's going to kick my ass if I don't stand up for the Sikhs at this point. But yeah, I mean, that must be shaped by the kind of situation in Canada. And I guess we can get into that in a minute. Yeah.
It's exactly that. It's not referencing what's going on in India. I don't think he's talking about the, the, the gang violence in, in that community. Yeah. That's exactly what, and the reason I'm quoting from these people is because, you know, I don't, I don't have the wherewithal to address it at all. So I'm just going to, you know, hedge and use these quotes from people in the community. But anyway, that it's not like a defensive, I think, or calling them out for defending themselves. Yeah. That sounds like, it sounds like genocide to me, mate. So, you know, watch out.
Take it easy, buddy. Anyway, similar to how the IRA had like a groundswell of support in Boston and New York that tied in with organized crime, the Khalistani movement had support in Western Canada, especially in the Vancouver area. In fact, there was even a particularly bad terrorist attack in the mid 80s blowing up an Air India flight that had stopped in Canada where some Indo-Canadians were implicated. Now, where does this fall into like the whole thing we're talking about?
There's rumors some of the early gangsters like the Dosages and Dohal, some of their parents and older relatives were somewhat involved in these groups, that they sort of ingrained some of the warrior ethos from this. Ron Dosage was allegedly the leader of a band group called the International Sikh Youth Federation that was heavy into the separatist stuff. At the same time, in the 70s and 80s in Canada, these guys were dealing with a heavy amount of racism and discrimination. You know, there's tons of stories of turbines being ripped off,
Kids being attacked at schools, other gangs picking on them, little kids having, you know, racist things yelled at them. And this is the kind of thing that leads to these young Indo-Canadian guys, you know, they're getting picked on and whatnot to link up and form their own groups and fight back. And also, I don't want to give the wrong impression, right? The overwhelming majority of Indo-Canadian Sikh Punjabis are actually very successful law-abiding citizens. Here's a quote from a 2020 article from The Juggernaut, which is a South Asian-focused publication.
For South Asians, particularly Punjabis, immigration to Canada has largely been a story of success. Punjabi is now the third most widely spoken language in the country, and the community has amassed visibility, wealth, and political power. There are currently more Sikh representatives in the Canadian House of Commons than in the Indian Lok Sabha. But racism in Canada is still a reality. Leader of the New Democratic Party,
Jagmeet or Yagmeet? How do I? Whatever. Yagmeet Singh. Yagmeet Singh was unlawfully detained by police 11 times since the age of 17. And brown Canadians experience police profiling frequently.
Am I going too heavy with the background stuff? Like, I promise you all, we're going to get to the cocaine and the murdering people and nightclub stuff soon. I just kind of find the background to all this stuff really interesting. I think it really adds a layer to these stories. No, I mean, look, if you look at the amount of notes I get from editors, there's basically a variation on, like, why the fuck is there so much nut gruff? You know, the history stuff's not going to be a problem with me.
I think listeners seem to like it too. I mean, they give us almost no shit for that compared to moaning about my rubbish jokes or because we apparently love gangsters or whatever. But anyway, guys, we love your comments. Keep them coming. It's actually interesting. It kind of reminds me this dynamic of Jews and Italians in like the first half of the 20th century. I mean, it's a reach, but you have this marginalized immigrant group who have a lot of success. But at the same time, there's a vicious undercurrent of crime and gangs rising up.
One more interesting thing about the wave of Indo-Canadian immigration that gets going in the 70s and 80s from the Juggernaut article, quote, the majority of them were Jats, typically a peasant caste,
And they started off working in mills and lumber and came to own the land, which later proved extremely profitable because it was where BC bud, top-notch weed, was grown. South Asians also got involved in the trucking and taxing industry. So you had these connections in the drug producing and the drug transporting industry that proved very useful. So yeah, I mean, where was I? But I think you were going to tell us about the Cold War relationship between Punjabi Sikh politicians and the Indian National Congress, right? I think.
Yeah, anyway, Bindi is an enforcer. The Dos Anjos brothers are running shit, getting big packages of Coke, chopping it up, etc. In 1991, though, Jimmy gets knocked for killing a Colombian dealer, and this sort of puts Ron on his back foot. That's when Bindi and Faisal Dean, the guy who brought him into Los Diablos, break off on their own. They start getting their own Coke supply, selling it not through Los Diablos. Other members start breaking off too, and you have a split in the factions. But it doesn't get crazy right away.
Vinny and Faisal run into some problems too. Faisal and one of his gangmates kill a guy who was dating the gangmate's 17-year-old sister, stabbing him a few dozen times, and the 17-year-old sister a few days later commits suicide. This is a huge story in the papers. Dean and his gangmate get arrested, but there's another witness, this guy Sanjay Narain, who unfortunately had a reputation for freebasing coke and talking just way too much.
Bindi sets up a fake drug deal, catches Sande, shoots him in the head, and throws him off the top of a dam. The body is found. Everyone assumes Bindi did it. And this is kind of where his rep starts to build. Cops anywhere around at this time? I mean, there are cops, but I mean, these guys take care of witnesses, you know, and they'll, they spend time in jail. You'll, you'll see how it goes, but it is, I mean, this is, I included the story just because like this guy's already killing witnesses, you know? So it's like, it's, it's going to get crazier.
Bindi doesn't back down, though, even though he's under police suspicion, right? He's out in the clubs. He's popping bottles, all that shit, even with the police tailing him. Around that time, Jimmy gets let out of jail because witnesses refuse to testify for obvious reasons. And when he gets out, him and his brother are pissed that their former coppo is doing his own thing in the limelight and recruiting some of their guys. Right away, they take a hit out on him. And this is from Samuel Kerr from that Medium article. Quote,
Using back-channel communication, he offered to pay the hitman twice the price to double-cross Jimmy Dosange. Shortly thereafter, the hitman told Dosange that he had a shipment of stolen electronics that he wanted to offload. They set up a meeting in an alley at 33rd and Fraser, and when Dosange arrived to view the stolen goods, a pair of cars blocked off the ends of the alley, boxing him in. Then, gunmen started shooting.
And that's what leads to the news report I mentioned at the top. And that's when that happens. And Bindi becomes a celeb in kind of like the John Gotti manner. Then, of course, Jimmy gets killed as well. And the killings and attacks just kick off. Shootings all over, drive-bys, nightclubs, everything. Bindi's neighbor is out walking Bindi's dog soon after, and he gets gunned down by people mistaking him for Bindi.
Then the CBC Canadian broadcasting corporation company interviews Bindi asking him if he's scared. And he gives this iconic soundbite that people still talk about today. Quote, I just want these guys to know you've got another thing coming, bitch. I'm still around. It's all, you know, very Canadian, these death threats and these trash talking bites. It sounds pretty unhinged. I mean, I didn't have Canadians locked down for that kind of thing. Also, why, why did he pay the hitman double? Why not just pay him like a hundred bucks more or something like guys, the contract killer for fuck's sake.
I mean, I'm in the wrong business for so many reasons. You know, I don't know, but I assume that if you're a hitman and you betrayed the guy who hired you, even for like $100, it's not good for your... You know, you're not going to get five stars on Yelp, right? So you're going to make it worth your while and double the price kind of seems accurate for that. Are you now saying that gangster is off limits to me as well? What? Are you now saying that I can't even be a gangster?
Oh, no, I've been saying that from the beginning, but I don't want... Is that regarding... Anyway. Yeah, my ability to play Hitman is probably not the best.
Yeah, it's not about as good as your ability to make jokes. But yeah, man, back in the day, before YouTube, before everyone had IG, you could just get these guys to come on news programs and talk. I mean, frankly, I'm just jealous. And this wasn't like now when every retired mobster has their own YouTube show. These were like guys still in the midst of things, like trying to kill each other and wanted by the police, essentially. So it's just, you know, it's wild, man. Those clips are all on YouTube too. We'll put them up in the sources and all that. So-
Anyway, this giant war is happening between the Indo-Canadian sea gangs now, as the Punjabi Mafia has split into the Dosanjh faction, calling it that even though they're dead at this point, and their crew features two other Canadian Indian OGs, Robbie Kandala and
and Ranjit Chima. And then there's the Benny Joe Hall faction. Now, the Dos Anjos faction had a hit squad called the Independent Soldiers. They were the enforcers. It's sort of like how I talked about when I was in Colombia in that episode with Toby. We met the Oficina del Inmigado guys who were essentially the hit squad enforcement arm for Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel.
These guys, exact same thing. You know, they're part of it, kind of, but also technically a little separate. And they used to get tattoos with that on their stomach, independent soldiers. Bindi decides to form his own hit squad, and he calls it the Elite.
Most reports say there's about five of them, but I've seen some say that there were eight. And allegedly their only job is to kill people for Bindi. And apparently they would end up doing between 25 and 30 hits for him alone from like 1996 on. I mean, I want a whole episode on that Colombian stuff, by the way. That sounds pretty cool.
We did it, man. If you go back to the episode on Otoniel, it kind of gets you there. Right, okay. But I mean, we could do a whole show on that. But yeah, it's wild there. And there's a quote from a law enforcement official in that academic paper I mentioned earlier.
In the day, gangs were very organized and there was a sense of, they kind of all got along. It was good for business not to fight and war and they were making lots of money. But when you get people like Bindi Johal and Raj Chima and some of these guys come into the game, they're just complete killers. There was no honor among thieves as there was. It just turned into murder and mayhem.
Meanwhile, the Canadian police, I mean, they're on threat level midnight. There's just violence and murder and shootings everywhere. So really soon after the Dosanjh murders, they arrest Bindi and five of his gang members and put them on trial. There was an 150-man special police task force that investigates the murders. They spend an insane amount of money, and the trial actually ends up being the most expensive in Canadian history at the time due to security measures. And this...
Well, I mean, I keep saying there's wild stuff that happens, but the trial is something else. It's five months long. There's witnesses, wiretaps, all sorts of evidence. And this is 1995, by the way. Bindi's denied bail, but a few of the other guys are released as the trial continues. One of those guys is Peter Gill, who I believe is Bindi's cousin. Gill somehow starts a flirtatious relationship with a juror, this woman, Jillian Gass.
She's a blonde, divorced mother of two. She notices him the first day of the trial. He's like dressed really nice. She assumes he's a lawyer at first.
Anyway, they kind of begin this back and forth thing. I don't know what it is. Flipping hair, making eye contact, who knows? But about three months into the trial, they meet up and they go for a walk in a park. They make out, all that, and they begin this relationship. And he persuades her he's a victim of police racism, that all the charges are a lie, and that him and Vinny and all them are innocent. She falls in love.
She would later say from the Samuel Care piece, quote, at the time, I thought I felt love for him. But in retrospect, it wasn't love. It was an obsession. It was really stupid of me, but I really did think that if we had sex, it would get it out of our systems. I mean, you know, we've all been there, right? It was the first known time in Canadian history that a juror had a sexual relationship with an accused murderer while the trial was before the court.
I mean, you know how it is, bro. Like sometimes the toxic ones are the ones that hold your heart. Yeah. I feel like the phrase known time in Canadian history is doing a lot of carrying a lot of water there. I mean, this is literally the plot of the best episode of Peep Show ever. And also Peter Gill. I've got questions, man. Like Peter Gill is a victim of racism and also Gill and Guess, the courtroom romance. I mean, this is a lot. This is a lot. Yeah.
Well, Peter was, Peter's a nickname. He was Indo-Canadian as well. And there was, you know, obviously a lot of issues with police and the community in that time frame, and I think still now. So the accusations of racism, I think, have always been there. It's just that these guys were also like pretty obviously murderers and gangsters. So, you know. Anyway, the trial ends, and guess what? The verdict is not guilty in no small part because guests persuade some of the other jurors. Oh.
Police eventually catch on to the fact that Gil and Guess are dating when they're spotted out and about, just like living it up in the clubs. They eventually get arrested and charged with obstruction of justice, but they can't really retry Bindi at this point. Guess serves a short jail sentence and Gil gets a few years. Okay, that court story that I mentioned from My Misplaced Youth at some point, it kind of runs similar to this thing, but I'll wait to another episode to go into that properly. It's a good one.
After close to two years of being locked up, Joe Hall's out in the streets and just wilding out, reasserting himself, stabbing, shootings, even apparently like he used to go to nightclubs and just shoot his gun in the air to let the people know that he was back. And he's getting money, by some estimates, $4 million a year. His crew is extorting lower level drug dealers, running marijuana grow ops, trading that weed for guns and coke, doing contract killings, robberies, anything.
anything and everything. The marijuana is the prized BC bud. So it's really popular. And the US, you know, they go across the border, they trade it for coke and guns with groups that operate south of the Canadian border. And I've seen other sources say that they got involved with bringing in heroin from India and Pakistan too. But that might have been different groups and not till I think the 2000s and a little bit later.
Also, these guys, they're based mostly in Surrey, which is like the Vancouver suburbs, but also BC's second largest city. And it has a population of 200,000 Indo-Canadians. And Surrey has the stereotype now of the Surrey Jack. It's sort of like your Jersey Guido or your Chav. And Johal is like the originator of it. It's funny that Surrey is like the poshest place in the UK then. Yeah.
Just outside London. Well, yeah, I mean, this is, it's, it's not a bad, we'll get into that, but it's, it's, it's a decent, 200,000 people with like, that's a huge population of people. Yeah. Huge population. You know, so these guys, they're known for like designer track suits, expensive sunglasses, steroid use, gold change, all that, you know, up in the club with your cousins, popping bottles and just starting shit.
Bindi and his crew, like, they're this weird combination of that and, like, 90s-era gangster rappers. And that sort of niche subculture still continues there till this day. Like, you can YouTube people doing Siri Jack impressions and tutorials of how to behave like one and stuff like that. But, yeah, Bindi is on the scene, you know, warring with the other faction, the Punjabi Mafia. And then one of his boys cops some coke from a teenager named Randy Chan. Okay, these names. They're good. Yeah, I'm in. Hmm.
The coke, however, it's been super stepped on and the Joe Howe crew is pissed. They grab Chan and they throw him in a car trunk and they kidnap him and they hold him for, I think, a day or two. Chan, though, happens to be the younger brother of a major gang boss in the Lotus Gang, which is like a local Chinese street gang triad affiliate. And they're no joke.
Bindi manages to negotiate the release of the kid, though, for five kilos of cocaine. But the police get tipped off and they're out in full force. They fear this is going to kick off another major gang war. Bindi gets arrested. He's locked up. So, you know, he's his typical self and he mouths off to the media about how he's going to get off and nothing's going to happen. He ends up jailing with this guy named Bal Buttar.
Buttar is from the same area. Him and his brothers are criminals too, but they're nothing like Bindi at this point. Bindi though, he takes Baal under his wing. They bond hardcore. Bindi is getting him ready to join the elite when he gets out, you know, his crew of killers. In later years, Baal describes the jail stint to Kim Boland of Vancouver Sun, quote, "'When I was in jail with Bindi, Bindi told me, "'You are going to be the one underneath me. "'You listen to me. "'If you take care of things at your end, "'I'll be happy with you, brother. "'If you fuck me over, I'll kill you, right?'
Side note, we know all this because seven or eight years later, after Ball has been paralyzed from the waist down because of a shooting, he confesses to a lot of stuff, including murders, to Bolin when he finds God and wants to get everything off his chest. I mean, it's unreal, this quadriplegic hitman spilling everything to the Star Crime Reporter. And there's more of this, too. I can't believe it's not butter. That's one for the Brits. Move on. Awful.
When Butter and Joe Hall both get out, they go clubbing, they beat up people, they extort people, you know, just living the life. Joe Hall takes him to the gym. He's only 150 pounds at this point, but Joe Hall gives him steroids. He puts on like 100 pounds. We need to get, you know, Derek from More Plates, More Dates on to discuss that cycle for real.
Joe Hall also sets up his criminal business. He has another guy named Roman Mann, a lieutenant who he has 15 people and controls the drug trafficking. Joe Hall makes tens of thousands of dollars a month off it. And Buttar has 20 people under him. They do the typical mafia stuff and they kick up the Joe Hall. You know, they're stealing loads of lumber, computers, your regular racketeering, hijacking, stealing luxury cars, fraud, and running the elite hit squad that charges 15 to 20K a hit.
Butters says they'd end up killing at least 25 people over the next few years. Sometimes even something as stupid as Bindi being jealous over a girl sets it up. Okay, so, I mean, I just want to have a quick name recheck. There's Randy Chan, Bal Butter, Gillan Guess, the Cork's Cross Lovers. Like, this is straying into Coen Brothers territory right now. I don't know, man. I think it's more Guy Ritchie territory. But definitely some...
some strange, like almost parody-like elements in it. Yeah, definitely. At this point, people are getting taken out left and right. Though in the fall of 1997, there's a sit down and the Johal faction and the leftover Dasanjh faction, they make peace and divide up territory. By 1998 though, Bindi is kind of losing his mind a bit. He's paranoid. He's ripping off associates. He's betraying a bunch of his friends, including from the five that were on trial. You know, a bunch of them actually are getting killed
And Bindi's turning on them as well. He actually contracts out a hit on Peter Gill, his cousin who had the affair with the jurist. And he gets shot at a bunch, but he escapes and lives.
Writes Bolin, Butter was shocked when Bindi said he wanted his own cousin killed. I thought this guy was kidding, but he was actually being serious. He wanted to take him out. According to a publication called Rediff, several of Johal's friends who assisted him remaining anonymous said he had grown stoical and prepared for his death following relentless threats by rivals against him and his family members and the successful attempts on the lives of his closest friends and associates. As I mentioned, you know, a couple of them have been killed in previous five or six months.
One night around then, Ball and his homies, including a dude named Derek Shankar, they're at a club, they're getting smashed, and they call up Joe Hall to come out with them. But he's like, nah, nah, nah, I gotta stay in. And look, we've all been there, right? You're tired, but trying to be responsible with the homies that are pressuring you to come out. Shankar, though, he calls him a baby, according to the media, but I assume it was like, you know, pussy or something, but whatever.
But our, his crew leave the club thinking nothing of it. But when they get to his house, Bindi's waiting there and he makes them go for a drive, take Shankar out of the car and just kills him. Like it's nothing that makes but our help him throw the body out over a bridge into a river. Now Shankar is one of our boys, right? They grew up together and he's just shocked at what happens. Sort of realizing Bindi had lost this shit. And he claims right then and there, you almost pulled out a gun on him, but he thought better of it.
That's when Buttar sort of realizes what everyone else already had, that this guy is just crazy. Says Kerr, quote, his associates described him as an extremely violent person who would often torture his targets sadistically and wouldn't hesitate to kill even the closest of his friends if they rubbed him the wrong way.
But I was on edge after that. And one night, a month later, they're driving together and they start getting pulled over by the police. Indy takes out a gun and asked but are to claim it as, you know, so we wouldn't get popped for like a long jail sentence. But I was a bit shocked because Bindi really rarely carries a gun on him and usually tells him what he's going to. So he kind of realizes then that Bindi was going to take him out that night. Now, keep in mind, this is actually all from but I was telling. So take it with a grain of salt.
He ends up taking the charge of being incarcerated for a short time. But while he's locked up, you know, he's already been making moves to do so. But he kind of takes the reins of the Elite Five or Eight, whatever it is. So now it's December 20th, 1998, 2 a.m. at the Palladian nightclub in Vancouver. And it's packed. 300 people are on the dance floor. Bindi's there wilding out like usual. And a man with a mask on approaches him and shoots him in the head, killing him.
Despite the club being packed, no witnesses come forward. Bindi was 27 years old. This is from Rediff again, quote, Though Johal had announced shortly before his death he was turning away from the world of guns and drugs and was going to India to get married, to many of his admirers, who are still grieving for him and have vowed to have his death avenged, he is still a hero. And we'll talk about that hero thing in a minute.
It turns out, Baal had put a hit on Bindi, offering 20k to whoever killed him. And there's good reason to think it was actually Baal's brother, Manny, who pulled the trigger. And we know this from two ways. The first is, in 2006, there's a fight in a restaurant in Surrey. Manny is drunk there with some of his homies. Some guy approaches, they're all drinking together, and the guy asks Manny what he does. Manny says he kills people.
not realizing who he's talking to. The guy is like, oh, my cousin was like that, and he lets on that Bindi was his cousin. Manny and his friends, they beat the shit out of the guy, and Manny allegedly says, and this was testified to in court by the victim, though Manny denies it, I got rid of him, and I can get rid of you. Manny at the trial claims that the guy who actually committed the assault was Peter Gill, remember the cousin who had the affair with the juror, because the guy made fun of Gill's man purse. Gill actually testifies that he did it as well. Additionally, as I mentioned before,
I'll get shot in August, 2001 at a hair salon. His friends had offered to take him to the salon to get his legs waxed as ball was into bodybuilding and balls actually set up by this friend and two others. One, because he was kicked out of the gang for being an addict, one over a girl and one simply to get him out of the way. I mean, so much of organized crime is just people literally setting up their friends to be killed. I mean, you just cannot get a good leg wax without getting popped either. Really unfair.
Yeah, I mean, see, that's what I'm talking about. Like, some of this stuff is just almost comical, but it's also just so brutal and vicious and violent. Wow, welcome to Canada. Well...
Yeah, Ball ends up paralyzed and blind from the shooting. Then in 2004, he confesses everything to Kim Bolin of the Vancouver Sun. Quote, in a series of interviews, he offered a disturbing glimpse into a criminal underworld that lures teens craving attention, money, and power, and turns them into gangsters, drug dealers, and killers willing to portray their best friends to move up in the organization.
Now, after Bindi died...
Again, the factions, well, his faction splits up even more and the Buttars took one of them and the bloodbath just continues. Shootings, murders, drive-bys, all that. My third Buttar brother, Kelly, is actually killed outside a wedding reception in December of 2001, but the brothers get revenge and have the elite kill the drug trafficker that did it. Says Ball, quote, it's because of the easy money. We have marijuana here and people say it is a beautiful drug.
But when people deal big quantities of that, there is murder. All of this violence is caused by marijuana. A lot happens with marijuana. Ball dies in 2011 from an infection, but not before getting arrested for trying to hire a hitman to help a friend kill her husband in 2007. He pleaded guilty to that, but he actually never got charged for any of the murders he confessed to, to Kim Bolin. As he said himself, like, what are they going to do? Throw me in prison. They don't have the facilities to take care of me because he was a blind quadriplegic.
Manny actually gets arrested a bunch too in 2009 for a bar brawl, 2016 for a gun charge when he's working as a longshoreman. From 1991 to 2008, there was 130 people killed during the South Asian Vancouver area gang wars. And that's before another massive war took place in 2009. And in 2009, actually-
This might need to be a part two. A crazy gang war kicks off in Vancouver, not just with the Indo-Canadian gangs, but the Asian gangs, the bikers, Red Scorpions, United Nations, the Bacon Brothers, you know, Hells Angels. Canada is, like, it's nuts, bro. Yeah, let's definitely do that. We've been neglecting our Canadian friends, too. I mean, we need more of this stuff. This is great. Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, these gangs almost effectively started by the Dosanjh brothers and Bindi. You know, they're still going. In 2018, an annual report done by Canadian police ranked the Indo-Canadian gangs third in terms of strength in Vancouver, behind only the biker gangs and the triad slash Vietnamese gangs. But yeah, I mean, after all these deaths, Bindi, the Batars, Dosanjhs,
The violence has just continued. In 2019, the CBC called them middle-class gangs and noted that the average detached home price in Surrey is $1.1 million. Quote, many young members have come from middle to upper-class homes. They aren't driven by poverty, but instead by their desire to belong, to be protected, or to emulate the gangster lifestyle flashed by other teens on social media. Some become trapped in gangs once they join, while others just meet the wrong friends and find themselves caught in the crosshairs.
It's interesting, the Washington Post actually had a similar write-up in 2004, quote, the gang members are often from well-off families, local leaders and officials said. Unlike in other countries, people involved in the gang activity here are not the poor or disadvantaged, said Wallace T. Opal, a justice of the Court of Appeal of British Columbia. For the most part, kids involved here are people who come from middle-class and upper-class homes. They get involved for the glamour.
And Bindi and his crew, I mean, they basically set this path for these extremely violent, murderous, middle-class drug gangs in the area. And they influenced a lot of young people to get involved. And there's a few reasons for this besides the usual glorification of gangsters and drug dealers. This is from that academic paper about the folk hero thing that I mentioned, a quote from a teacher for secondary school in 2016.
Every grade 8 kid is talking about Bindi as he is some hero who defied the police and got killed. And his interviews are online and people are looking it up. And these grade 6, 7 kids are always searching them up and bringing him up. And here's a quote from a former gang member also in 2016.
When we sit down and think about race relations in this country and our community, shit, we look at people like fucking Bindi and say, hey, did he do something for our community? Did he? Like, moralism aside, put the ethical, moral shit aside. Let's just deal with power relations. And so...
When you look at South Asian young men today, this guy becomes a fucking icon. He becomes a fucking god in the imagination of the emasculated South Asian male. All of a sudden, they're like, all right, we can fucking do this. Fucking do what? I mean, yeah, I guess that's a bit of a reach. But also leaving the morals aside is like a great cousin to I'm not racist, but it's just it's a great quote.
Yeah, I mean, there's like, you know, that it's completely absurd, especially considering he killed only really other Indo-Canadian men. But whatever, there are certain complexities to it, and that's not making sense for it. Right, right. And that's where we sort of leave it with Bindi and his crew talking about their legacy, right? His name is still talked about in the area as something of a legend, someone who broke these tropes against Indo-Canadians as being weak.
and people who could be picked on by racists. Here's a quote, and I hate to do this because it's from Reddit, but it summarizes things nicely. There was a lot of racial tension and hate crimes being committed against them, but Bindi changed the landscape of things. With his ruthless, violent nature, he gave the Indo-Canadian community a symbol of hope and resistance to the violence they had faced.
I mean, if anything deserves you guys' Patreon money, it's the fact that we are digging deep into r slash Indo-Canadian crime to get stuff for these episodes.
And another gang member from that paper quote, so Bindi comes along and he's fucking ripped with fucking muscles. He's got 40 fucking pounds of gold around his fucking neck. He's just shot three fucking people and he's laughing about it on fucking TV. You know, it's an emasculated male driving around in a Corvette, 40 chicks lining up at a bar to suck his redacted. Hey, take a number, take a number girls.
Guy turns into a fucking legend. In terms of race, it's really interesting in terms of race relations how these things, how does this work? And it fucking made a difference. Fucking white folks stopped fucking around with fucking East Indians after that. They were like, okay, maybe I'll just keep my mouth shut next time I'm thinking of calling you a Hindu.
So, I mean, there are some that really view him as a hero, even though his impact has been said to have now led generations of young men of the same background into a life of violence and crime they didn't need. And at the same time, you know, the majority, the overwhelming majority of people who die at the hands of these gangs are
are also young men of Indo-Canadian heritage. We're talking hundreds. And much like in many of our other episodes, you know, gangsters almost always pray on their own. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this wasn't the kind of thing MLK was talking about in the 60s, but that quote, man, that you just did was, that was great. That was really incredible. I think we've done a swear quote of the week.
Yeah, you can kind of, you know, again, I don't agree with it, but I get it to a degree. And here's a last quote from the 2020 Juggernaut article.
The fact that he killed brown people rather than white racists didn't tarnish his legacy. Johal changed the game for what it meant to be Indo-Canadian, pioneering the idea of brown suburban gangs. By the time he died, he had left behind hundreds of young men hungry to fill the role of the next Bindi Johal at a Canadian public newly fascinated with Indo-Canadian organized crime. So yeah, that is the story of the Punjabi mafia and of Bindi Johal.
And, you know, I find it very fascinating. I hope, you know, we didn't drag too much stuff into these questions of identity and all that sort of stuff, because I feel like, you know, that's not really our lane. But I think it is interesting to kind of look at how these guys are viewed by the community, both in the negative and the positive light, and the sort of various things they represent and the various, you know, geopolitical or just political
other dynamics at play while these gangs are rising up. Yeah, man. But if you hate that stuff, let us know. Yeah. If you hate that stuff, let us know and we'll stop paying attention to it and just do stuff about violence and cocaine. Anyway, as always, patreon.com slash the underworld podcast. If you guys want to email us, the underworld podcast at gmail.com, especially, you know, if you're Indo-Canadian and have stuff you want to talk about about this episode, I'm happy to do that and to air anything you might want to say before our next episode. But, um...
But yeah, I mean, thanks for listening as always. Oh, let me do some shout outs to our people on the Patreon that, uh, that really keep us, you know, keep us going despite how awful Sean's jokes are. Cause we, yeah, I feel like I've just hit a low point in that episode as well. Fucking hell. We'll see. Maybe, maybe Dale will edit some of it out or maybe not, you know, maybe, maybe want to leave it what it is, but, um, yeah, yeah.
Let it keep going. All right. Hold on one second. John Simon, Patrick Rowland, Tanner McCleave, Sam Ramsey, Juan Ponce, Pete Thomas, Mike Ulrich, William Wintercross, Trey Dance, Matthew Cutler, Ross Clark, Jeremy Rich, and Doug Prindle. Thank you guys so much. Honestly, your support just keeps us going for sure. And yeah, I mean, that's it.