Patna: The police action on protestors in Bihar has stood out for the exceptionally harsh treatment accorded to protestors. The image of a police officer firing with an AK-47 in Siwan has become an emblem of police impunity. Three people in Siwan were hit by bullets and are being treated at Jayprabha Medanta Hospital in Patna. One of those hit is a 15-year-old minor. His family says he works at a local shop and was not part of the protest. Siwan Superintendent of Police Puran Kumar Jha said he had ordered an inquiry and the policeman who had fired AK-47 towards the protestors, had been suspended.But beyond this incident in Bihar, the FIRs filed by the police against protesters are a testament to the brutality with which the police has tried to throttle any attempts at protest or marches in the state. Chief minister Samrat Choudhary, the first the BJP has been able to appoint in the state, is yet to issue any statement beyond one on July 23, responding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s general post, saying the “youth are the biggest strength of the country. No attempt to play with their future will be tolerated.”The Bihar government has later promised to withdraw cases filed against youth protesters during the movement demanding accountability for paper leaks, but a look at the cases that were filed offer insight into how the police respond to dissent and whom the police was hoping to go after.The Wire has looked at eight FIRs the Patna Police filed over two days of student protests, July 22 and 25. The FIRs named hundreds of people, and roughly 14,000 ‘unidentified’ others were also charged.An analysis of the documents found that they contradict one another on who protested, how many people were there and how old the accused are. Stringent charges aimed at ensuring protesters are arrested and find it hard to secure bail were invoked, hundreds were rounded up and only cursory medical examinations conducted, different officials filed identical complaints, and attempts were made to pass off minors as adults.The Wire has reached out to the IG, Patna asking about the discrepancies found, identical complaints, the treatment of minors and the withdrawal of FIRs. This article will be updated when a response is received.The night of July 26The All India Students’ Association (AISA), the students’ wing of the CPI(ML), had called a statewide bandh on July 25 demanding that the police action stop and protesters in custody be released. The police had started arresting people from July 24 on FIRs that were filed on July 22. On the night of July 26, more than 100 people were produced before a single magistrate in Patna. Some of them were in handcuffs, and all of them had been charged under a single FIR registered at the Gandhi Maidan police station.Advocate Akash Shankar represented around two dozen of them. He told The Wire that many of them were minors. He said, “The magistrate herself saw that three or four children had handcuffs on. Because of that she issued a show cause to the SHO, who is the informant in this case, the one who registered the FIR.”Shankar added that the medical examinations of more than 100 people took about only 30 minutes. “It was just a mechanical process, a formality. Some of the students were injured, and had received no medical attention.” Shankar further said that the magistrate ordered that the handcuffs be removed and the seriously injured be given medical attention.He added, “The law allows handcuffs in a short list of cases. It covers repeat offenders, people who escaped custody, and people accused of crimes such as organised crime, terrorism, murder, rape and acid attacks. The Supreme Court in 1980 held that handcuffing a person is inhumane and needs a recorded reason. In 1995 it held that police cannot use handcuffs without a magistrate’s permission. None of that was the case here.”The Gandhi Maidan FIR number 401/26 named 144 people, out of which The Wire has found more than 50 to be minors. Three of the accused in the FIR are aged 13 and 14. The FIR also books 5,000 more people as unknown. After being produced in front of a magistrate till midnight, the adults were sent to custody while the minors were released after being made to sign a bond.Mohan*, aged 30, the cousin of one of the minors part of this FIR, told The Wire, “After my cousin, who is 17, was picked up on 25th afternoon while he was returning from his coaching, we had no idea about it. His phone was switched off. I searched for him in six different police stations in Patna before finally finding him in Gardanibagh PS.”He added, “I got to know on the 26th night that all of these people are being taken to the magistrate, there I went and we signed a personal bond, and had my cousin released and took him back home. The police had hit them, and the other minors were also treated very badly. A lot of them required medical attention.”Seven more FIRs were filed by the Patna Police against protesters at three police stations: Gandhi Maidan PS, Kotwali PS and Sachiwalay PS.Changing age of accused, large number of ‘unknowns’On July 22, a horticulture officer posted to Bikram block, Subhash Kumar, deputed as the executive magistrate for the maintenance of law and order in the area extending from Dak Bungalow Chowk to Income Tax Golambar, wrote three separate FIRs to the officer in charge of Kotwali police station. All three describe the same crowd, the same stretch of road on the same day, and contain almost identical lists of the people he says were there.Two of those lists record a boy aged 14, another aged 15, two aged 16 and one aged 17. In the third complaint, all five are 19 years old. Oddly, a sixth person is recorded as 17 years old in one complaint and 19 years in the other two. The fathers’ names, addresses and mobile numbers match. Only the ages have changed, suddenly making them adults.The Wire has reached out to Kumar to ask about this discrepancy. This article will be updated when a response is received.Shashwat Srivastava, advocate at the Patna high court explains why this matter, “A child alleged to have committed an offence is a child in conflict with law within Section 2(13), and from that point the Act governs everything. He answers to the Juvenile Justice Board and not to the ordinary criminal courts. He is not to be placed in a police lock-up or lodged in a jail in any circumstances whatsoever, the proviso to Section 10(2) admitting no exception. He is to be released on bail whatever the offence alleged, unless one of the grounds in Section 12 is made out, and where custody cannot be avoided he goes to an observation home under Section 47 and not to a prison. His identity may not be published, Section 74 forbidding it. Institutionalisation is a measure of last resort, which is what Section 3(xii) says in terms, and the principle of fresh start in Section 3(xiv) explains why. None of this is indulgence. The Act proceeds on the footing that a child drawn into the criminal process is at risk from the process itself, and that what he retains of an ordinary life depends on how little of that process reaches him.”Two of the FIRs enter ‘unknown’ as a numbered accused in the list. One line reads “unknown 500”. Another reads “5000 unknown”.Srivastava said, “FIR registered against an unspecified body of unknown persons gives so much power to a police person, leaving them accountable to nobody. There is no allegation for any individual to meet, no material against him to be tested, and no stage at which the officer’s suspicion needs to be justified to anybody. Anyone who was present at the site of the protest can be dragged into it. So, in practice, anyone who can later be said to have been present, can be pulled in for investigation, at any time while the investigation lasts. What is recorded as information about an offence becomes a standing authority to arrest at large.”Patna’s Dak Bungalow Chowk on July 22. Photo: Neel MadhavTwo officials file the same list of accused for different incidentsTwo Sachivalaya police station FIRs were filed by two different officials. One is a revenue officer from Sampatchak, Chandan Kumar Gupta. The other is a block agriculture officer from Phulwarisharif, Balkrishna Das. They were deputed as ‘Executive magistrate’. Both attach the same list of 95 accused; the names and serial numbers appear in the same order. Both FIRs say the accused were identified at the spot “from various sources”. Neither of the FIRs mentions a photograph, video or identification parade.The agriculture officer’s account says that at around 2:30 pm he learned, from various sources, that 95 people named were part of a planned conspiracy. His list carries their fathers’ names and home addresses across 14 districts.One of the Gandhi Maidan FIRs goes a step further. In it, one of the accused is identified by their Instagram handle. Seven are identified by the word “YouTuber”. Three of those seven are accused of leading the march.The Wire has reached out to Gupta and Das to ask about these identical lists and their basis. This article will be updated when a response is received.The charges made arrest the defaultAll eight FIRs cite Section 109 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. That is ‘attempt to murder’ and carries a punishment that can result in a life imprisonment.Srivastava said, “Once an offence punishable with more than seven years is on the FIR, the arrest falls outside Section 35(1)(b) of the BNSS and into Section 35(1)(c). Clause (b) is the one that carries safeguards. It obliges the officer to satisfy himself that arrest is necessary on one of five specified grounds and to record his reasons in writing while making the arrest, and where arrest is not required, to issue a notice of appearance instead. Clause (c) carries none of that. Add Section 109 and the whole of that apparatus disappears, whether or not the section has any material behind it.”. Most of the other charges in these FIRs carry less than seven years of punishments.In two of the eight FIRs, no injuries are listed. Yet the attempt to murder is invoked.Across all eight, police say 31 of their personnel were hurt. At the same time, there is no mention of the names of injured personnel, hospital or a medical report. All eight also charge Sections 3 and 4 of the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act, 1984. Section 4 covers damage caused by fire or explosives and carries a minimum sentence. But none of the eight FIRs allege fire or explosives. The weapons they describe in the FIR are bricks, stones, sticks and flag poles, and in one FIR, a knife. The column asking for the value of the damaged property is blank in all eight.Same people in two places?One Sachivalaya FIR says police caught ten protesters at B.P. Mandal Golambar at around 3:30 pm. It says they were questioned and formally arrested. The same ten people, with the same name, age, father’s name, and address appear in two Kotwali FIRs. Those FIRs place them at a different location, taking part in offences that ran until 3:45 pm.At the same time, an examination of the General Diary (GD) references indicates post-dated entries across the filed complaints: Gandhi Maidan P.S. FIR No. 390/2026 records GD No. 1042/24072026 (indicating a 24 July 2026 entry), Sachiwalay P.S. FIR No. 158/2026 records GD No. 1280/23072026 (reflecting a 23 July 2026 entry), and Gandhi Maidan P.S. FIR No. 401/2026 reflects GD No. 1153/27072026 (indicating a 27 July 2026 entry). The column asking for reasons for delay in reporting is blank in all eight.In three FIRs, the column for the complainant’s signature carries a police officer’s name instead. In one of those, the officer named is the station house officer who, according to that same FIR, had been injured earlier that day.Detentions and arrests without procedureAccording to Sachina, an advocate at the Patna high court who is representing CPI(ML) leader Sandeep Saurav, “On the evening of 24 July 2026, approximately 30-40 persons arrived at the residence of Sandeep Saurav. Some of them were in plain clothes. They took Mr Saurav away, informing those present that he was being taken to Kotwali Police Station merely for questioning. However, instead of being questioned and released, the police took him for a medical examination, produced him before the jurisdictional magistrate, and had him remanded to judicial custody within approximately two hours of taking him from his residence.”He added, “According to the information available, no grounds of arrest were communicated to Mr Saurav at the time of his apprehension, nor was any arrest memo supplied to him or his family. On the same day, the police also picked up several other students from different parts of Patna in connection with the same series of incidents. Immediately on 25 July 2026, a regular bail application was filed on his behalf in the said case. Upon hearing the matter, the learned court called for the case diary. During the proceedings, it came to light that Mr. Sandeep Saurav had also been named as an accused in several other FIRs.”Students await implementation of commitment to CJPStudents and activists allege that Patna Police used force on July 25 too. Varuni, a student activist with Patna-based student group Disha, recounted, “Kartikeya Sharma, who is the SSP, had clearly said, do it peacefully (on Bihar Bandh), that is your democratic right. But in action what happened is that even if two students are standing, if any student is standing in a group, they [the police] hit him with a lathi and remove him from there. In Gandhi Maidan even someone standing at a tea stall [was not spared]. They beat many cart vendors and rickshaw pullers with lathis and drove them away.”“There is a student in touch with us who is 15 years old. Fifteen or twenty policemen targeted him. He was hiding behind the shops. They dragged him out from between the shops and beat him. His eye is swollen. He has several injuries on his back,” she continued.The protests ended in Delhi before they ended in Bihar. Students gathered at Jantar Mantar celebrated Pradhan’s resignation on July 25. The CJP called off the national protest. But in Bihar, the police were still arresting people. One of the CJP’s demands that the government accepted was the withdrawal of all FIRs against protesters, and no punitive actions in the future.On July 27 night, the Bihar government issued a notification. The Home Department said no adverse legal action would be taken against anyone who protested before 6 pm on July 26. It said the process of withdrawing every FIR, complaint and show cause notice would begin and everyone arrested or detained in those cases would be released immediately. Bihar Police said they had by then detained 694 people during the July 25 bandh and had released 339 minors. The remaining 355 were booked and were to face trial.Another order arrived on July 28 from the Office of Advocate General of Bihar, listing all the FIRs with names of districts, FIR number and the sections applied in it, asking compliance of the Bihar government decision to withdraw the cases. The order listed a total of 64 FIRs filed across Bihar, out of which 27 are from Patna, including the eight FIRs analysed in this article. Even after the order, several family members and advocates of arrested protesters say their relatives and family members remain in custody.The Wire found at least one FIR against protesting students that falls within the window the government has promised to clear, but does not appear on the list of cases to be withdrawn. Khagaul police station Case No. 371 of 2026 was registered in Patna district at 7:20 pm on July 23, well within the period covered by the Home Department’s notification – yet it is not in the Advocate General’s list. It names seven people and between 150 and 200 unidentified others, under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita covering rioting, disobedience of a public servant’s order, obstructing a public servant and provoking a breach of the peace.Syed Imam, 27, a student activist and one of the seven named, said the march had been held near Jagat Narayan College in Khagaul, demanding Pradhan’s resignation and protesting the Delhi Police action against students at the Parliament march. “We did not have permission from the police, but the march was completely peaceful and the police were present, and they were witnesses to it,” he said. He learnt of the FIR on July 25. “I don’t know why the FIR against me is not in the list,” he said. “If this stays, we have no option but to fight the case further.”Neel Madhav is an independent journalist.