‘Would have evaded arrest had they not uploaded reels’: Bihar CM Samrat Choudhary on Jamui case

Security personnel carry an accused allegedly involved in the harassment of a boy and a girl by the roadside, after he was shot in leg during a police encounter, in Jamui (PTI Photo)

At a gathering he addressed days after the sexual harassment of a teenager in Jamui, Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary made a statement that drew attention. “People live more in reels than in reality these days,” Choudhary, who has the home portfolio, said. “Had they [the Jamui accused] not uploaded those reels, they would have evaded arrest.”

The remarks came in a week when videos brought to light two incidents of sexual harassment in Bihar. One in Jamui, where a group of men accosted two teenagers on a bike, sexually harassed the girl and assaulted the boy, and the second in Samastipur, where a minor was sexually harassed by a group of men. In both cases, the videos prompted police to make arrests – six in the first case and four in the second.

But since then, the police have also intensified a crackdown on such posts, registering First Information Reports (FIRs) against roughly 120 social media accounts for circulating a viral video revealing the identity of a minor victim who was molested in Bihar’s Jamui. They have also issued advisories against sharing posts of the Samastipur incident.

The crackdown isn’t limited to this week alone: according to a senior official, the state police, in coordination with the Cyber Crime Prevention Unit (CCPU), registered 475 FIRs across Bihar in the first half of the year for social media misuse.

“Some 103 people were arrested under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Information Technology Act,” a senior officer told The Indian Express. “Authorities issued over 450 takedown notices to platforms, resulting in the removal or blocking of more than 1,300 posts and URLs, alongside the deactivation of over 500 fake accounts.”

Brandishing firearms on social media too faces a similar response. Data shows that between May 1 and July 14, 2026, 102 cases were registered under the Arms Act and the Information Technology Act for brandishing firearms online, while 130 people were arrested. Forty illegal weapons were also seized.

Patna, Gopalganj, Naugachhia, and East Champaran registered the highest number of violations, data shows.

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According to the police, as an additional layer of deterrence, FIRs filed for weapons displays are synced with the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems (CCTNS) and National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), with officials using advisories to warn the youth about the effect of these records on future jobs, exams and document verifications. Use of licensed firearms for such reels, meanwhile, leads to permanent cancellation of licences, officials said.

Santosh Singh is a Senior Assistant Editor with The Indian Express since June 2008. Expertise He covers Bihar with main focus on politics, society and governance. Investigative and explanatory stories are also his forte. Singh has 25 years of experience in print journalism covering Bihar, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka.   ... Read More