KILLING OF A DON
Kanpur’s dreaded ganglord Vikas Dubey, whose long-arm connections and influence with the state police and politicians were part of local folklore, didn’t last a day in the custody of the UP police. Arrested outside Madhya Pradesh’s Mahakal temple in Ujjain, after a tip-off on July 9, he was being taken to Kanpur when the car he was travelling in overturned, reportedly in an accident, an hour before the police convoy was to reach the city. As with his associates, the police say he tried to snatch a gun before they shot him dead.
It ended a seven-day chase of the ganglord from Bikru village in Kanpur district, whose men, on the night of July 2, had massacred eight officers of a 20-member Uttar Pradesh police posse who had gone to the village to arrest him. But the ‘arrest’ and subsequent killing of Dubey raise disquieting questions. Inspector General (IG), Civil Defence department in the UP police, Amitabh Thakur asks, “What was the hurry to kill him in an encounter? We couldn’t arrest Dubey and he finally surrendered in faraway Ujjain. What is the government trying to hide?”
If media reports are to be believed, Dubey, who was holed up in Faridabad,
Haryana, was planning to surrender in a court in Noida. But the massive police presence at the court complex dissuaded him as he had feared that he would be ‘encountered’. He gave the slip to the police there and made his way to Ujjain in MP. Sources say he informed the MP police about his location, following which they turned up to ‘arrest’ him. Dubey was handed over to the UP police after the Ujjain local court approved a transit remand.
In Kanpur, Dubey’s mother had told reporters that Vikas visited the Mahakal temple every year during the month of shraavan and that “Mahakal
saved him from certain death”. It didn’t quite play out like that.
The game of death started about a week ago on July 1 after the Chaubeypur police (Bikru and nearby villages fall under its jurisdiction) refused to file an FIR against Dubey in a case where the charges included attempt to kidnap and murder. Kanpur SSP Dinesh Kumar P. had to intervene to ensure the FIR was lodged. The next night, the SSP formed a 20-member team including the station officers of three local stations under CO (circle officer) Bilhaur, Devendra Mishra, to arrest Dubey. What they didn’t know was that a mole at the Chaubeypur police station had tipped off Dubey about the raid and that a heavily armed welcome party awaited them in Bikru.
Dubey had some 40 of his goons waiting at his house. At around 1.15 am, as the police team approached his residence in the dark on foot, they were ambushed. CO Mishra was among the eight police personnel killed in the firefight that lasted about half an hour.
It was the first time in decades that the UP police had lost so many personnel in a single operation. Although a number of his accomplices were hunted down and killed or captured in the next few days, Dubey managed to stay one step ahead. State DGP H.C. Awasthi set up a hundred teams to get him but to no avail. The state also put a prize on his head: Rs 2.5 lakh, later doubled to Rs 5 lakh. Former state DGP Vikram Singh says, “The Kanpur incident is proof of the nexus between khaki (the police), khadi (politicians) and criminals. The system fully supported Dubey. He was aware of the operation from the start.”
The Yogi Adityanath government soon suspended Chaubeypur SO Vinay Tiwari and a few others. A lot many more were transferred. The Special Task Force tracked the call records and found that three dozen police personnel, including Tiwari, were in touch with Dubey. In a public show of outrage, the police razed his house, spread over two bighas of land, in the village.
Meanwhile, it came to light that slain DSP Mishra had twice sent reports on Tiwari’s transgressions to the SSP’s office last year. No action was taken on either occasion. Dinesh Kumar P., who joined as Kanpur SSP last month, says, “Mishra filed several incriminating reports on Tiwari; the details are being gathered.”
Dubey’s story started in 1990 when the first criminal case was registered against him at Shivli police station in Kanpur. In the 30 years since, Dubey was implicated in 70-odd cases, involving land grab, criminal intimidation and murder. In 2000, Dubey shot dead a retired school principal, Siddheswar Pandey, in a land dispute (sentenced to life in the case in 2005, he secured bail in September 2019). He earned a place in the media’s bahubali list in October 2001 when he chased and shot dead Santosh Shukla, then Labour Contract Board chairman (with minister of state status) inside the Shivli police station.
The assassination of Shukla, a senior BJP leader, shook the entire state. Despite orders from then chief minister Rajnath Singh (the current Union defence minister), the police could not arrest Dubey. Four months later, he surrendered in court. He was sent to jail but such was his clout and reputation that the case fell through. Some 16 eyewitnesses, including the investigating officer, turned hostile in court. Senior criminal lawyer in Kanpur, Rakesh Vaishya, says, “Such was his influence that the government did not even appeal against Vikas’s acquittal in the high court. The Shukla murder case files just got buried.”
Currently, there are 71 cases, including five murders, registered against Dubey in different police stations of Kanpur. Despite this, his name was never in the list of the state’s top criminals or even among the land mafia in any station in Kanpur.
In 2000, Dubey won the district panchayat elections from Ghimau in Kanpur. Gradually, his influence spread to over 40 of the 56 panchayat seats in the block, so much so that irrespective of which political party was in power in the state, the Shivrajpur block pramukh in Kanpur district was always Dubey’s man. In 2005, younger brother Deepu Dubey’s wife, Anjali, became the Bikru village pradhan. Dubey also got wife Richa elected to the Ghimau panchayat that year.
His influence over nearly 20,000 people in a dozen villages made him useful to the ruling party, be it the BSP, SP or BJP. This was also why Dubey remained untouchable despite the many ‘encounter’ deaths of criminals in the state. In fact, in October 2004, two former MLAs of the BSP, who have now switched to the Congress and the BJP, staged an all-night vigil at Kalyanpur thana to make sure that Dubey, who had been arrested in a criminal case, was not ‘encountered’.
Now, belated as it may be, chief minister Adityanath has ordered an investigation into every criminal case related to Dubey. Additional DirectorGeneral (ADG), Kanpur zone, J.N. Singh, rubbished theories that the don was killed in an encounter. “Why would we have him killed? The Ujjain police interrogated him and so did our STF. We have got several leads and the investigations will continue into his criminal activities. Many of the things the media is speculating about will become clear in the coming days.”
“The incident in Kanpur is proof of the nexus between khaki (police), khadi (politicians) and criminals. The system fully supported Dubey” Vikram Singh Former state DGP