New Delhi: The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has added an Indian national, Amritpal Singh, to its “most wanted” list, accusing him of a central role in a transnational drug-trafficking conspiracy. According to a Times of India report, however, Singh had already died in a road accident in Jalandhar, Punjab, in 2025 – well before the bureau made its notice public.
The FBI’s notice, issued on July 29 this year said Singh, described as 30 years old, is wanted under a federal warrant that a federal Los Angeles court issued against him on June 23 this year. He faces charges of conspiracy to distribute and possess controlled substances with intent to distribute, and a separate charge of conspiracy to export controlled substances. Investigators trace the case to his alleged membership of what the bureau calls the Ravinder Dhanda Organized Crime Group, a criminal network the FBI says is based in Vancouver, Canada.
The group is accused of moving sizeable consignments of cocaine and methamphetamine for trafficking outfits operating across the US, Canada and Mexico. The case is being handled by the FBI’s Los Angeles field office as part of a wider effort the bureau calls “Operation Hard Ball”, targeting organized crime networks with roots in Punjab. The bureau lists Singh’s date of birth as January 7, 1996, and has circulated a photograph of him taken in 2024 to aid identification.
It did not say when this information was last verified.
The listing was reported widely across Indian media on Wednesday and Thursday, including the US-based American Bazaar, which focus on affairs non-resident Indians and people of Indian origin in North America. Each account drew on the FBI’s own notice, describing Singh as a fugitive wanted for his alleged part in an international narcotics ring. None mentioned, at the time, that he might no longer be alive. That detail surfaced separately, in a TOI report.
Citing information from Jalandhar, the TOI said Singh had died in a road accident in the city last year, calling into question how current the bureau’s information about him actually was. Neither the FBI nor Punjab Police has publicly addressed the discrepancy so far.
Bishnoi network faces parallel prosecution
The case surfaces amid a broader tightening of coordination between Indian, American and Canadian law-enforcement agencies against Punjab-linked organized crime networks operating out of North America. Only three weeks earlier, on July 7, the US justice department announced charges against Lawrence Bishnoi and his associate Satinderjeet Singh, known as Goldy Brar, over the 2023 killing of the Khalistani separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Canada. The FBI has separately offered a reward for information leading to Brar, whose Bishnoi network Canada classified as a terrorist organization in 2025.
Momentum behind the crackdown had already built after a Punjab Police inspector, Gurpreet Singh, was killed in Nangal, prompting investigators to examine possible links to gangsters based overseas. Agencies in India, the United States and Canada have broadened intelligence-sharing on Punjab-linked organized crime in recent years, targeting groups accused of drug trafficking and extortion.
For now, the discrepancy over Singh’s fate remains unresolved. It would not be the first instance of a foreign wanted list lagging behind ground realities in India, where records on deaths, aliases and closed cases do not always reach international databases in time.