A scathing political salvo landed on Bihar's ruling establishment on Saturday, 7 November 2026, as RJD leader and Leader of the Opposition Tejashwi Yadav accused the state police of shooting civilians inside their homes — and charged that a 'criminally-minded Chief Minister' was using caste-targeted encounters to deflect from a spiralling law-and-order collapse.

The accusation: police shooting civilians, criminals shooting police

Tejashwi posted in Hindi, quoting what he described as an official advisory — 'Apni jaan ki zimmewaari janata khud hogi.. CM lagwa dein har jagah board' ('The public will itself be responsible for its own life — the CM should put up boards everywhere') — framing it as a chilling admission of state failure. His central charge was blunt: Bihar Police is entering homes and shooting ordinary people, while armed criminals are, in turn, shooting at the police. 'Horrifying conditions in Bihar after a murder-accused, criminally-minded person became Chief Minister,' he wrote.

The sharpest line in the post was a structural political argument: when an 'unaccountable police force and a criminal Chief Minister are cornered on rampant crime,' Tejashwi alleged, they resort to encounters targeting people of a 'specific caste' as a diversionary tactic. The claim directly invokes Bihar's most electrically charged political fault line — caste — and frames police violence as a tool of political survival rather than law enforcement.

Bihar's long shadow: encounters, caste, and opposition politics

Bihar has a documented history — stretching across multiple governments since the early 2000s — of opposition parties accusing the ruling coalition of deploying police encounters for political cover. The Rashtriya Janata Dal, founded by Lalu Prasad Yadav, has consistently positioned itself as the voice of marginalised caste communities in the state, making allegations of caste-selective policing a recurring and resonant pillar of its opposition strategy.

The post does not name the specific incidents it references, and the precise encounters or home-shooting cases cited cannot be independently verified from available information. What is verifiable is the political pattern: Tejashwi, as Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Legislative Assembly, has made law-and-order accountability a central plank of his opposition platform, and posts of this intensity typically precede or accompany formal demands for assembly debates, adjournment motions, or public protests.

What the Bihar government and police have yet to say

As of the time of publication, no official response from the Bihar government or the state police department had been issued in reply to Tejashwi's allegations. The ruling coalition's counter-narrative — when it comes — will likely focus on crime-rate data, encounter justifications, or procedural compliance. Whether these specific charges surface during the next sitting of the Bihar Legislative Assembly will be a key indicator of how seriously the opposition intends to press them.

Bihar's voters, particularly those from communities historically targeted in police actions, will be watching whether this post is the opening move of a sustained campaign — or a single political salvo into an election-season wind.