The recent killing of eight policemen and thereafter a dramatic “encounter” of the main accused and dreaded don Vikas Dubey who faced 61 cases, including 8 of them for murder, is a perfect script for any Bollywood movie which will be super hit at the box-office. However, no killing can be justified in the real world, whether it was the killing of policemen or the extra-judicial killing of the notorious gangster Vikas Dubey in Uttar Pradesh on July 10.
UP Police alleged that the criminal who was handed over by the Ujjain (Madhya Pradesh) police on way to Kanpur, after a car accident escaped from their clutches after snatching a gun from a policeman and firing at police personnel and injuring them before he was shot dead in self defence.
The story was not easily fathomable as UP Police in the past had encountered several of the accomplices of Vikas Dubey. soon after the incident in which eight policemen were killed about a week before this encounter. The encounter does raise several questions and the Yogi government is under pressure to come out with the truth. According to the reports an independent one-member commission will investigate the death of Vikas Dubey.
The commission will be headed by a retired judge and will submit a report within two months, the Uttar Pradesh government said Sunday afternoon. On Saturday the government also set up a SIT (special investigation team) to probe Dubey’s rise to notoriety. The SIT was, however, not tasked with probing events surrounding his death. It will consist of a senior IAS officer and two policemen and has been directed to submit its report by July 31.
Critics in political circles have charged that Vikas Dubey could have revealed many secrets cutting across party lines on the politician and criminal nexus in the State and hence it was a pre-planned murder. In fact, in the past, states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have shown the world how the nexus between the politicians and criminals exists.
The questions which need to be answered are (a) Why was Vikas Dubey’s car switched while shifting him to Kanpur? (b) Why was the criminal, charged with over 60 criminal cases, including murders, not handcuffed? (c) Why was the media which was following stopped two km away from the accident and encounter spot? (d) Gunshots were heard by locals, but there were no witnesses to the accident. Was it staged? (e) Why was there a Supreme Court plea suspecting a fake encounter less than a day before the killing? There are several other questions leading to the car going turtle etc.
Uttar Pradesh police team on July 2 attempted to arrest gangster Vikas Dubey and in turn found themselves in an ambush. A shootout ensued and a deputy superintendent of police, three sub-inspectors and four constables were killed but Dubey escaped. He was arrested only a week later, on Thursday morning in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh.
The question is how could Dubey plan such a deadly attack on the police? According to the Uttar Pradesh police, the gangster may have been tipped off about the raid by sympathisers in the Kanpur police and this also exposes a nexus between the police and the criminals. Vikas Dubey in 2001 had shot dead a state minister named Santosh Shukla inside a police station. His trial turned out to be a farce. Every witness, which included 25 policemen among them, turned hostile which led to the acquittal of Vikas Dubey.
Dubey’s incredible clout comes from the people backing him in political circles. The gangster influenced significant pockets of Brahmin-dominated villages in the Kanpur rural area. This meant that he could influence elections – ranging from panchayat polls to parliamentary ones. This may have contributed to his strong control over the local police.
This encounter is no isolated case. All such questions need to be investigated with sensitivity and answered publicly to restore confidence among the people in general. In a democracy there is a rule of law and such extra–judicial killings send a message that the faith in the judiciary and the system is eroding and is compromised.
