Complainant against Dubey goes missing

KANPUR: The man, whose FIR against gangster Vikas Dubey prompted the police to conduct a raid at Bikru village early on July 3, is missing, according to his family members and the police. The raid led to an ambush in which Dubey and his men killed eight police personnel, including deputy superintendent of police Devendra Mishra.

Rahul Tiwari, besides being a complainant, is a key witness to the case related to events that led to the ambush, the police said. Kanpur’s senior superintendent of police, Dinesh Kumar P, said he also faced a grave threat to his life. A team led by deputy SP (LIU) Sookshm Prakash is searching for him.

His mother Suman Devi said Tiwari last spoke to him on July 2. “He sounded scared over the phone; then he disappeared with his wife, children and his sisterin-law. I haven’t heard from him since,” she said.

According to the police investigation, Tiwari, who lives in Jadepur Nivada village adjoining Bikru, wanted to dispose of the land belonging to his in-laws at Monica Nivada village, which is also located in the vicinity. His sisters-in-law (wife’s sisters) opposed the proposed sale. One of the them, who lives in Bikru, sought Dubey’s intervention in the matter.

Tiwari was threatened and beaten up publicly by Dubey on July 1, according to the police investigation. The next day, he gave a written complaint to Vinay Tiwari, the then station officer at Chaubeypur.

According to the police, the station officer, instead of lodging a complaint, had asked Tiwari to accompany him and met with Dubey for reconciliation. However, they were both beaten up by the gangster. Following the incident, the FIR was lodged on the evening of July 2.

A few hours later, Mishra assembled a team comprising 25 policemen, including three police station officers, for a raid on Bikru where the gangster and his men ambushed the police team and killed eight of them.

Two petitions seeking an independent probe into the recent encounter killing of gangster Vikas Dubey and his accomplices will be heard by the Supreme Court on Tuesday. The petitions, filed separately, by lawyers Ghanshyam Upadhyay and Anoop Prakash Awasthi, have demanded either a judicial probe into the alleged extrajudicial killings or a probe by an independent agency, such as the Central Bureau of Investigation or National Investigation Agency (NIA), into the events of July 10.