Gangster Vikas Dubey was killed in an encounter after a road accident on Friday morning while being taken to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh, where he was arrested yesterday.
Just an hour short to reach Kanpur, the car in which Vikas Dubey was being taken, overturned on the highway that was slick with rain and he tried to escape after snatching a gun, according to the police. He was shot dead, like many of his accomplices who, according to the police, had also tried to escape from custody.
Vikas Dubey snatched a pistol from one of the STF (Special Task Force) men escorting him after the accident. He then ran to a nearby field but was surrounded and was asked to surrender, which he refused to do, they added.
There was an exchange of fire and he was killed, they said.
STF officials said there was an encounter as Vikas Dubey, arrested for killing eight policemen on July 3, tried to escape when the vehicle overturned early in the morning.
“Four policemen were injured in the accident today. Vikas Dubey has been killed in police encounter,” said Mohit Agarwal, Inspector General, Kanpur.
Visuals after the incident showed Vikas Dubey being taken away on a stretcher. He was declared dead in hospital.
“After being chased by the police team, he was asked to surrender but he did not and started firing with the intention of killing them. The police team fired back in self-defense after which Vikas Dubey was injured. He was taken to a hospital, where he died during treatment,” Kanpur Police said in a statement.
Evading UP policemen on his trail for five days, Dubey had driven from Kanpur to Faridabad in Haryana, where he escaped from a hotel just before the police arrived. He then drove to Kota in Rajasthan and finally to Madhya Pradesh, without being checked on the 1,500-km journey.
Questions were raised on whether the gangster turned himself in at a time and place of his choosing. Police officer Mohit Agarwal had said: “We had caught many of his associates and a few were killed. So definitely he was trying to save his life and on the run.”
BSP leader Mayawati on Friday took to Twitter to demand a Supreme Court-monitored probe into Vikas Dubey encounter.
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has questioned the encounter, saying it was an attempt to save the government from the secrets Dubey could reveal.
Senior police officers told TheIndianExpress that Dubey could have possibly strategised his arrest to avoid being killed by the police in an “encounter”.
“There are CCTV cameras everywhere and the private security guards inside the temple premises don’t carry guns. A surrender before the police anywhere else would have been risky for him,” a senior officer said.
A petition filed in the Supreme Court last night had asked for security for the gangster and a CBI investigation into a series of encounter killings.
