Police fired at Vikas Dubey in self-defence, Uttar Pradesh govt tells SC

The Uttar Pradesh government on Friday defended before the Supreme Court the encounter killing of gangster Vikas Dubey and his 'bullet gang' in Kanpur by stating that the police team fired only in self-defence.

The firing ensued as Dubey started firing indiscriminately and continued to fire while fleeing after the vehicle carrying him from Ujjain to Kanpur overturned on July 10, said the UP government. It also added that Dubey was facing 64 criminal cases and was serving a life sentence in one of them and killed eight policemen on the night of July 2 while he was out on parole.

In an affidavit, the Home Secretary said the police fired in self-defence as Dubey wanted to attack and not surrender as he snatched a pistol and fired. It maintained that shooting back at him was the only option for police as Dubey had the intention of killing cops and fleeing as he'd done before.

"He had all the reasons, motive, object, and capacity to escape on July 10," when the vehicle, carrying him from Ujjain met with an accident in Kanpur.

The incident was real and not a manufactured one, it maintained, while pointing out that a judicial inquiry commission has already been set up by the state government.

The killing of gangster Vikas Dubey “can never be termed as ‘fake encounter’ looking at the incident in totality", it asserted.

The state government's reply came in response to a couple of PILs seeking probe into criminal-police-politicians nexus and killings of eight policemen and the subsequent elimination of Dubey and his gang members.

The top court is expected to take up the matter on July 20.

It had earlier indicated to set up a committee as it had done in case of Hyderabad encounters of suspects allegedly involved in gang rape and murder of a veterinary doctor.

The Yogi Adityanath government pointed out that the facts in the case related to "hardened criminal" Dubey and the Hyderabad encounters were completely and diametrically different.

In the Hyderabad case, the four accused were not hardened criminals, there was no accident prior to encounter and the Telangana government had not set up a judicial inquiry commission, it said.