‘A blot on democracy’: Calls for independent probe after police shoot dead Indian crime boss in custody

Police in India have shot dead a crime boss less than 24 hours after he surrendered himself in a case which rights groups say shines a spotlight on the country’s high rate of extrajudicial killings.

Vikas Dubey became the most wanted man in the country after a botched police raid at his home in the northern city of Kanpur last week ended in the deaths of eight officers and another seven being wounded.

Dubey, in his forties, escaped the scene of the ambush and was on the run for a week before he handed himself in to the authorities after visiting a temple in central Madhya Pradesh on Thursday.

He was being transferred back to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh state when, at around 0700 local time [0130 GMT], he was shot dead on an isolated stretch of road.

Kanpur police claim the patrol car in which Dubey was travelling overturned due to a road accident, and that the suspect tried to take advantage of the situation and flee.

Assistant superintendent of Kanpur Police Dr Anil Kumar said Dubey grabbed an officer’s handgun and opened fire before he was shot dead.

But opposition parties – Uttar Pradesh is, like the central government, run by the Hindu nationalist BJP – and rights groups have questioned the circumstances surrounding the death.

NDTV reported that media were ordered to stop following the convoy carrying Dubey around half an hour before the incident that led to his death.

Six of Dubey’s alleged accomplices have also been killed by the police in the past four days, according to state government spokesman Avneesh Awasthi.

Dubey was accused of involvement in more than 60 crimes ranging from killings to robberies and kidnappings, and believed to have ties to both police and politicians.

Amarnath Aggarwal, an opposition Congress party leader, accused police of planning the killing of Dubey. “It was committed with the motive that Dubey did not reveal the names of people who provided patronage and protection to him,” he said.

Extrajudicial killings in police custody – dubbed “encounters” in India – are a relatively common occurrence, referenced in Bollywood thrillers and met with little public shock. Shortly before Dubey’s arrest on Thursday, the India Today news anchor Rajdeep Sardesai quoted a retired police officer on Twitter saying: “It’s unlikely Vikas Dubey will be caught; he and associates will be mostly ‘encountered’, they know too many secrets about too many ‘big’ people… Watch this space.”

A report last month by a New Delhi rights group, the National Campaign Against Torture, said at least 1,731 people died in custody during 2019, the equivalent of five custodial deaths a day.

The most recent case to gain such national attention was in December last year, when four men suspected in the rape and murder of a young female veterinarian in southern India were shot dead after investigators took them to the crime scene. Police said they had tried to flee.

Shabnam Hashmi, director of the Indian social justice charity Anhad which has previously challenged so called “fake encounters” in the Supreme Court, told The Independent that Dubey’s case was another example of the breakdown in the rule of law in Uttar Pradesh, a state with one of India’s highest crime rates according to the National Crime Record Bureau.

In January 2019 the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) expressed “alarm” at the scores of extrajudicial killings in Uttar Pradesh police custody committed in the previous two years.

Ms Hasmi also drew attention to the fact that last Saturday, two days after the failed police raid on Dubey’s home in Kanpur, officials razed his house to the ground.

“We strongly condemn the fake encounter of Vikas Dubey and the way his house was demolished. This we assume was done to remove all traces of his connections with various political leaders,” she said.

“The politics of blatant fake encounters is a blot on Indian democracy.”

Human Rights Watch said Dubey’s killing “raises serious questions about whether police in India are seeking to bypass a justice process”.

“The killing of Vikas Yadav is yet another example of police failure and rights violations in India,” said the NGO’s south Asia director Meenakshi Ganguly. “The pictures from the site show that he was being transported by a large group of policemen. Even if a man who had surrendered decided that he would make a run for it, there are serious questions about how he ended up dead.”

In a statement, Amnesty International India called for an “independent, impartial, effective and thorough criminal investigation into the alleged extrajudicial execution of Vikas Dubey”.

“Extrajudicial executions have no place in a modern and rights-respecting society. They cannot be allowed under any circumstances, including a ‘war on crime’ or other public emergencies,” said executive director Avinash Kumar.

There are currently no plans to open up Dubey’s killing to a federal probe by the Indian Criminal Bureau of Investigations (CBI).

Nor, according to the BJP home minister of Madhya Pradesh – where he was captured – should there be.

“[The] law has taken its own course,” Narottam Mishra told reporters on Friday. He claimed that “if Dubey wanted to reveal any secret he could have done it”, adding: “He was in police custody for about 17 hours.”

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