The intimidation campaign that India’s most feared criminal network has waged against entertainers reached a west Delhi gym before dawn on Thursday. Two men on a motorcycle fired several shots outside the 24 HS Fitness centre in Paschim Vihar at around 4 am and fled, and within hours a social media post attributed to the Lawrence Bishnoi gang had claimed the attack and named its real target: a singer’s friendship with Salman Khan.
No one was injured, police said, and the area was cordoned off while investigators collected shell casings and examined CCTV footage. The incident was reported within hours by The Indian Express, NDTV, India Today, Hindustan Times and dozens of other outlets, most of which described the gym as linked to or run by Punjabi singer Guru Randhawa.
The post claiming responsibility, whose authenticity police have not confirmed, said the facility was targeted because Randhawa had grown close to the Bollywood actor, according to the Free Press Journal and Times Now. The Bishnoi network has pursued Khan for years over the 1998 blackbuck poaching case, and proximity to the actor has repeatedly figured in its threats against others.
The singer’s own connection to the gym is the first fact under dispute. While most early reports called it a Guru Randhawa franchise, the Free Press Journal reported that police initially found no ownership link between the singer and the fitness centre. Randhawa, one of Punjabi pop’s biggest crossover stars, had not commented publicly by Thursday afternoon.
The pattern is by now unmistakable. Gunmen linked to the same network fired outside Khan’s Mumbai residence in April 2024, and shooters claiming allegiance to it attacked the Canada home of Punjabi-Canadian artist AP Dhillon the same year. Punjabi music, with its cash-heavy live circuit and global diaspora audience, has become the preferred extortion ground, and a public claim of responsibility is part of the product: the threat is the message.
Each incident has pushed India’s entertainers further behind private security, and Thursday’s firing will tighten that spiral. A shooting that injures no one but generates a national headline achieves precisely what an extortion economy needs, visibility and fear at minimal cost, and police in two states have said in the past year that the gang deliberately targets celebrity-adjacent properties for exactly that reason.
What remains unverified matters as much as what is known. Police have announced no arrests, have not confirmed the authenticity of the claim post, and are still establishing who owns the gym. Whether Randhawa receives formal protection, as other named targets have, will be the next signal of how seriously Delhi Police treats the threat.
