THE LONG ARM OF VIKAS DUBEY
Kanpur’s dreaded don Vikas Dubey has become more of a nuisance dead than he was alive, at least for the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh. It has been under attack from all corners since the morning of July 3 when news spread that the gangster had massacred eight policemen in his village Bikru. Almost two weeks later, allegations of political patronage and Dubey’s links with the police have still not died down, even though he is gone, killed in a police encounter on July 10.
Amid increasing political pressure, Chief Minister Adityanath formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) on July 11, and then, a day later, a one-man judicial commission headed by retired high court judge Shashikant Aggarwal. The SIT will investigate Dubey’s political and police links, with a report expected by the month-end, while the commission will probe the spate of encounters since July 2 in which various Dubey gang members were killed.
The Opposition, however, remains unimpressed by the flurry of activity. Samajwadi Party (SP) president and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav says, “With Dubey’s encounter, the BJP government has also killed off any possibility of exposing the unholy nexus between the gangster, police officials and his political guardians in power.”
The SIT, headed by additional chief secretary Sanjay Bhoosreddy, has already visited Bikru village and the local Shivli and Chaubeypur police stations (where allegedly Dubey’s writ ran) and has taken possession of all documents related to the dead ganglord.
The commission’s work is sensitive as there are enough and more complaints and court cases against the UP police’s trigger-happy ways. According to UP Police headquarters data, 122 alleged criminals had been killed (till July 13) since the Yogi Adityanath government assumed office in March 2017. Dubey was No. 119 on the list. So far, there have been 6,237 encounters and some 15,500 alleged criminals have been brought to book. The numbers were so alarmingly high that the Supreme Court decided to look into the People’s Union for Civil Liberties’s (PUCL) PIL in July 2018 flagging the ‘encounter culture’ in the state. The PUCL had alleged in its PIL that the UP Police was targeting the minorities. The state government, in its defence, filed a status report clarifying that of the 48 criminals killed in encounters in the one year till March 2018, only 18 were from the minority community. The case is pending in the apex court.
As expected, the twin investigations have caused a flutter in Lucknow and Kanpur, especially among political leaders and police personnel who patronised Dubey. A CD of the STF (Special Task Force) interrogation of Dubey on July 9 in Ujjain, MP, where he was arrested, has been submitted to the state home department and the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Speaking on condition of anonymity, a police officer posted in Kanpur, said, “Dubey has named four businessmen, 11 political leaders and many government officials including five top police officers.” It has also been learnt that more than 50 police officers used to frequent his house and that he was in regular touch with two IPS and three SP rank officers.
Dubey spilled the beans on his political connections, which included leaders from several states. An old video clip where he boasts of his proximity to the president of a political party has also been recovered. Meanwhile, the police are trying to connect the dots by interrogating the arrested members of his gang. The search for the gang’s no. 2, Vishnupal alias Jiledar Singh, has been intensified. Dubey used his clout to get Vishnupal elected (unopposed) as pradhan of Dhauthi gram panchayat in 2015. Police records say there are 17 cases registered against him in the local police stations. Vishnupal has been absconding since July 2 and the police worry he may be the new kingpin of the Dubey gang.
Senior criminal lawyer in Kanpur, Amit Vaishya, says, “The first priority of the police should be to recover the arms looted from the slain policemen and other illegal weapons in the gang’s possession. Whoever gets control of the weapons will be the next gang leader.” Two of the looted weapons, an AK-47 and an INSAS rifle, have been recovered so far. ADG, law and order, Prashant Kumar says, “The arrest of accused Shashikant Pandey, who had a bounty of Rs 50,000 on his head, led us to the weapons. The AK-47 was recovered from Dubey’s house on July 14.”
The investigation into Dubey’s ‘business activities’ is with the ED’s zonal office in Lucknow. Joint director at ED headquarters, Lucknow, Rajeshwar Singh, says, “We have asked the Kanpur police for case details involving Dubey and his associates, and documents regarding his assets, bank account details and other relevant information.” The gangster had close ties with two leading businessmen of Kanpur, one a soap manufacturer, and the other realtor Jai Bajpai, who is currently in police custody. The SIT investigation has unearthed regular bank transactions between Dubey and Bajpai’s family. An officer in the team investigating Dubey’s land deals says, “We have discovered properties worth crores of rupees, including schools, colleges as well as commercial and residential plots. The duo also launched several residential schemes in Kanpur where many plots were allocated to police personnel.”
Dubey’s foreign trips—he travelled abroad 11 times in the past three years— are also being looked into. Most of his foreign trips were to Thailand and the United Arab Emirates. Police sources say Dubey and Bajpai had purchased penthouses in both places. A bungalow in Arya Nagar, Lucknow, for a reported Rs 20 crore was another indulgence.
The Vikas Dubey saga has also thrown into relief caste divisions in Uttar Pradesh, which will no doubt be exploited for everything they are politically worth. A fanpage on Facebook, which described him as ‘Brahmin shiromani (supreme Brahmin)’ had over 1,000 likes in a matter of days. After his encounter, even BSP chief Mayawati tweeted that the Yogi government “should not do anything that will make the Brahmin samaj feel scared, terrorised and insecure”. Analysts say it’s part of the BSP’s new Brahmin-Dalit social engineering strategy before the 2022 assembly election. For the first time, the BSP also has two Brahmins leading the party in Parliament—MP from Ambedkar Nagar Ritesh Pandey in the Lok Sabha, and the party’s long-time Brahmin face, Satish Mishra, in the Upper House. Mayawati’s designs aside, there are efforts now to show Dubey as a fallen hero of the community. BJP state spokesperson Manoj Misra, who is from Kanpur, affects indignation: “The Brahmin community was afraid of Dubey. Bikru and its adjoining villages are dominated by Brahmins. Dubey had illegally occupied the land of many of them and was involved in the murder of at least three Brahmins. Now to play the Brahmin card over his death is sheer opportunism.”
That said, media reports on his ‘Robin Hood’ image in these same villages and the comments on social media seem to suggest that there is anger in the Brahmin community over how the incident played out. That a gangster’s death could bring out such sentiments shows how fraught caste equations still are in Uttar Pradesh. ■
“The arrest of Shashikant Pandey, who had a bounty of Rs 50,000 on his head, led us to the weapons. The AK-47 was recovered from Vikas Dubey’s house”
PRASHANT KUMAR ADG, Law & order