Chhattisgarh Gangsters Use Social Media to Flaunt Criminal Image, 36 Held

�Raipur:�A new trend has emerged in the gangdom of Chhattisgarh with the gangsters taking to social media to ‘enhance their criminal profile’ by cultivating an image of a hardcore outlaw.

The ‘criminals’ were seen posting videos on social media in which they were spotted wearing costumes of gangsters resembling the Bollywood movie villains while flaunting firearms and daggers to create an image of a hardcore criminal with an objective to terrorise common people.

“A new trend has emerged in the pattern of crimes in Chhattisgarh. The criminals were seen taking to social media to create an image of a hardcore outlaw to promote their terror business”, a senior police officer told this newspaper here on Friday.

These criminals were seen in the videos sporting weird hairdos and painting their faces to disfigure them with marks while flaunting knives and pistols in their hands to appear as an “authentic dreaded gangster’, the police officer said.

“As many as three dozen people have so far been arrested in Raipur for creating nuisances on social media by posting videos to project them as fearless outlaws”, senior superintendent of police (SSP), Raipur district, Santosh Singh told this newspaper.

They have been arrested under relevant sections of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

Most of them are drug addicts and have criminal records including serious offences such as stabbing, extortion, illicit liquor trading, and terrorising people, he added.

These ‘social media terrors’ narrate their past criminal activities in their videos to create an image of an ‘authentic’ dreaded gangster and even were seen in the clips daring the police to curb their unlawful activities.

The videos also include clips of violent actions of Bollywood movies involving famous villain characters.

According to the cyber cell police dealing with the cases, such ‘social media nuisance creators’ are found to hail from humble family backgrounds and semi-literates.

“They appear to be on drugs while making the reels of theirs”, a police officer said.

The trend of criminals taking to social media to terrorise people has now been curbed considerably after police began taking action in such matters, he added.