Decentralised Interstate Gang Network in the Digital Age: The Lawrence Bishnoi Gang

Abstract

The evolution of organised crime in India and its transforming relations between power and criminality increasingly reflect the logic of decentralisation, digital technologies and networked connections. The gangs headed by dons, which rely on sharp hierarchical authoritybased structures and are punctuated by layers of absentees serving only their personal interests, are giving way to a quasi-invisible architecture of fluidity, cell-based interactions and technological apparatus. Our paper places the Lawrence Bishnoi Gang at the centre of the inquiry of a contemporary interstate gang network in the digital era, exploring the dynamics of how new digital appreciation, reconnaissance, social media, encrypted exchanges and prison forays emerge to provide new reach and resiliency. Networks beg to differ; if we are to extend networkable theory to include also the study of criminality, then the Bishnoi network is the proof in the pudding. Making a special place for the records of recent homemaking, we examine how they view high visibility, dalliance in extortion, recruitment, targeted killings and crossborder desiring playing host to an archipelago in constancy even as the leaders are locked away in prisons away from home. Features like the need for hub and spoke models and high visibility required need to be varied in digital amplification, conspiring to leverage symbolic power, fear and reputation that take over physicality and locomotion for effective control over regions. Under considerable stake in the legal framework, the duration study examines most existing laws in the Indian Constitution that deal with gangsterism, such as the Indian Penal Code, better coupled with the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and new media protocols dilemmas seen in the context of jurisdictions, lax borders and differential standards in prosecuting loosely accreted actors. Themes, such as suggestions, Honda variants like focus on interstate security units in combating the malady of cyber threats are safeguarded, and digital surveillance, though with care for the future.