The AK-47 Video Hid a Statewide Police Ritual

Chhattisgarh police in seven districts fired after Shastra Puja on 20 October 2026. One clip of Rajnandgaon Superintendent of Police Ankita Sharma, in a saree with an AK-47, became the national argument.

Male officers fired the same Tuesday in Durg, Raipur and other police lines. The saree made one superintendent the face of a rite those units already treat as annual.

A Statewide Ritual Caught on Camera

Shastra Puja, the Vijayadashami worship of weapons, is a regular police and military observance. Officers honour rifles, revolvers, ammunition and vehicles, often with a priest and a public greeting. In several Chhattisgarh lines that day, the puja ended with shots into the air.

Rajnandgaon was not an outlier on the calendar. Videos of police firing after the rite were also shared from Raipur, Bilaspur, Raigarh, Durg, Kabirdham and Bastar. Mumbai’s Naigaon Armoury held its own puja the same morning, with no firing described in the public account of that ceremony.

WHERE THE FIRING WAS RECORDED ON 20 OCTOBER

Durg’s Senior Superintendent of Police, Vijay Agrawal, told the gathering his lines had worshipped weapons and vehicles according to the rituals. Aerial firing, in that account, was part of the programme, not a stunt that needed explaining. That is the institutional fact the Rajnandgaon clip buried.

What the Rajnandgaon Clip Shows

The ceremony was at the district Police Lines, also called the armed reserve. Weapons and departmental vehicles were worshipped. Sharma, known locally as Lady Singham, attended in a blue saree with the pallu tucked at the waist.

The viral clip shows her with an AK-47. She checks the rifle, moves the safety selector from safe to fire, pulls the charging handle, and looses several rounds into the air. Additional Superintendent of Police Kirtan Rathore then fires an AK-47 in a second video. The clip that travelled was not posted from her own account.

An unnamed IPS officer said blank rounds, known as awazi kartoos, are used for this rite across the state and that live ammunition is not. Rajnandgaon police have not issued a public note confirming what was in the magazine that afternoon. Until they do, the safety argument has to run on the handling, not on a lab report.

Hindi Desks Filed It as Harsh Fire

On the evening of the puja, local copy treated the shots as the rite itself. Desks in Rajnandgaon wrote that the superintendent had performed harsh fire, the usual phrase for celebratory shots, and had kept a centuries-old custom. The tone was festive. The saree was style. The rifle was resolve.

FROM LOCAL PRAISE TO A NATIONAL ROW

1. 20 October 2026: Police lines in Rajnandgaon and other districts hold Shastra Puja. Local reports describe Sharma’s AK-47 bursts as tradition fulfilled.
2. 21 October 2026: Retired Lieutenant General K. J. S. Dhillon lists safety breaks in the clip. Deputy Chief Minister Arun Sao says the government will take cognisance. Former police chiefs split on air.
3. 22 October 2026: National recaps still carry Sao’s line. No inquiry order, ammunition note, or written SOP has been issued.

The turn was not a new fact about the rite. It was a new audience. Army veterans watched a police-lines video the way range instructors watch a recruit, and they did not like the muzzle.

Dhillon Called the Handling a Black Demo

Dhillon, who commanded the Army’s Chinar Corps, quoted the Rajnandgaon clip on 21 October and listed what he said was wrong with it. He wrote that a loaded weapon was handled in a dangerously incorrect way, that it was pointed in all directions, and that people behind the firer looked terrified. He called the burst an unauthorised act in unauthorised dress, and a black demo of authority without responsibility.

Dangerously incorrect handling of a loaded weapon. All aspects of safety of weapon handling violated. Pointing a loaded weapon in all directions. Ppl in background are visibly terrified. Firing a service weapon for an unauthorised act in a non authorised dress. Basic weapon handling drill taught in the trg academies not adhered to. Such irresponsible action can cause death or hurt to self or others. Overall a black demo of authority w/o responsibility. Such acts of indiscipline must be appropriately punished to avoid reoccurrence

K. J. S. Dhillon, retired Lieutenant General, on X

What all is wrong in this video:-
– Dangerously incorrect handling of a loaded weapon
– All aspects of safety of weapon handling violated
– Pointing a loaded weapon in all directions. Ppl in background are visibly terrified
– Firing a service weapon for an unauthorised act in a… https://t.co/KG1vnOkDH5

— KJS DHILLON🇮🇳 (@TinyDhillon) October 21, 2026

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Sushil Singh Sheoran split the clip in two. He said Sharma looked at ease with the rifle, then said the safety procedures were very poor and that firing into the air wasted ammunition in the wrong place. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Sandeep Ahlawat did not name her. He wrote that Shastra Puja is about honouring weapons, not firing them, and that people who fire in combat do not fire at ceremonies.

Retired IPS officer R. K. Vij drew the same line from the police side. The tradition, he said, is the worship of weapons, not the firing of them, and such firing carries a risk of accidents and should be avoided.

WHERE FORMER POLICE CHIEFS DISAGREE

• Sanjay Sahay: The former Karnataka DGP said ceremonial firing is not a free act under service rules, that live service weapons do not belong outside a range or a live operation, and that the officer was not in firing dress.
• Ashok Kumar: The former Uttarakhand DGP said Shastra Puja is an armed-force and police practice, that shots inside police lines did not show a planned stunt, and that a uniform would have kept better decorum.

The split is not about whether she is a woman. It is about whether a police-lines courtyard is a range, and whether a festival greeting is an order to fire. Defenders also argued that mistakes in grip should be corrected without erasing her record in Naxal-affected postings, and that some of the pile-on was about the saree. That last point is the selection effect in the seven-district record: the other lines fired, and they did not become a national clip.

Section 25(9) Already Punishes Festival Gunfire

Parliament did not wait for this video. The Arms (Amendment) Act, 2019, Act No. 48, dated 13 December 2019 and in force from 14 December 2019, added a specific offence. celebratory gunfire clause in the Arms Act now sits in Section 25(9).

The subsection says that whoever uses a firearm in a rash or negligent manner, or in celebratory gunfire, so as to endanger human life or the personal safety of others, may get imprisonment for up to two years, or a fine which may extend to Rs 1 lakh, or both. The explanation defines celebratory gunfire as using a firearm at public gatherings, religious places, marriage parties or other functions to fire ammunition. The official text of that penalty is the two years or a Rs 1 lakh fine line.

Application is not automatic on a viral clip. The firing was inside a police lines campus, during an official rite, with a service rifle. Whether the courtyard counts as a public gathering, whether blanks change the offence, and whether departmental rules sit above or beside the Act are questions for a file Sao has not opened in public. It would be sloppy to call the clip a conviction. It is sloppier to write as if the 2019 clause does not exist.

Blank Cartridges Do Not Cancel Gravity

Blanks, if that is what was loaded, still contain powder. They make noise and flash. They are not a toy round. A 2025 inquiry in Kochi began after a sub-inspector heated ceremonial blanks in a frying pan and two of them exploded in a camp kitchen. Even the blank store is treated as live powder when it is handled badly.

If any round in Rajnandgaon was ball ammunition, the physics is older than the clip. A US Army Research Laboratory technical report lists an AK-47 muzzle velocity at about 715 metres per second. That is the speed leaving the barrel, not the speed on the way down. A forensic paper on celebratory fire records that falling bullets can still kill: a spent round may come down at 90 to 180 metres per second, a skull can be fatal below 60 metres per second, and in the hospital series that paper cites, deaths among people hit by falling bullets ran close to one third, against 2 to 6 percent for ordinary shootings. A 2013 case report in the Journal of Forensic Sciences documented two fatal falling-bullet injuries from celebratory gunfire.

WHAT THE SAFETY FILE STILL LACKS

• The magazine: No public statement from Rajnandgaon police names blank or live.
• The range: No marked danger area, sand butt, or closed courtyard is described in the videos that circulated.
• The dress: Service firing drills assume uniform and a cleared arc, not a festival saree in a crowd of staff.
• The paper: Other forces publish accidental-fire circulars; Chhattisgarh has not shown a Shastra Puja firing order for 20 October.

Maihar’s police lines in Madhya Pradesh, the same morning, at least named the round. The guard there fired four rounds of awazi kartoos. That is the minimum a ceremonial burst should be able to say out loud. The central arms safety training syllabus still starts with a basic session on safe handling and carry. Police academies teach the same first rule Dhillon recited: muzzle, finger, target. A festival does not suspend it.

No Inquiry Order Has Been Issued

Sharma is a 2018-batch Chhattisgarh-cadre IPS officer who took All India Rank 203. The home ministry civil list records her as SP, Rajnandgaon, since 27 October 2025. She is from Durg. Supporters point to earlier postings in Naxal-affected districts. That does not answer the muzzle question, and none of it required her to be the only officer dragged into a national safety row.

Asked about the Sharma video, Deputy Chief Minister Arun Sao said the government would take cognisance. By 22 October 2026 that remained the state’s last public sentence on the file. There was no named inquiry officer, no ammunition memo, and no circular telling other districts whether aerial fire is still part of next year’s puja.

Durg’s SSP had already described aerial firing as part of the rite. Raipur’s lines had already fired. The clip from Rajnandgaon did not invent the practice. It put a camera on the gap the practice lives in: a statewide custom, a 2019 statute, and no written rule that tells an SP when to leave the safety on.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a public controversy, a police ritual, and the Arms Act. It is for information only. It is not legal advice, it does not charge any officer with an offence, and it does not decide whether blanks, police lines, or festival custom change the reach of Section 25(9). Readers who need a ruling on liability, service rules, or ammunition should consult a qualified criminal lawyer or the competent police authority before acting. Names, postings, figures and the status of any departmental step reflect the public record as of the article’s date and may change.