Police officer suspended for alleged role in Vikas Dubey case, seeks protection

A police officer, suspended and arrested for his alleged role in passing on crucial information about a raid to nab history-sheeter Vikas Dubey, has moved the Supreme Court seeking protection citing the spate of encounters in which the gangster and his aides were killed.

The plea, filed through his wife Vinita Sirohi, apprehended that her husband Krishna Kumar Sharma may be eliminated through illegal and unconstitutional means.

Sub-inspector Sharma, along with three others, was suspended on July 5 for his alleged involvement in passing on information to Dubey about police movement towards his house in Kanpur district to arrest him.

Dubey was killed in an encounter on Friday (July 10) after a police vehicle carrying him from Ujjain to Kanpur allegedly met with an accident and he tried to escape from the spot in Bhauti area.

Eight policemen, including DSP Devendra Mishra, were ambushed in Bikru village in Chaubeypur area of Kanpur when they were going to arrest Dubey and fell to the bullets fired by his men from rooftops shortly after midnight on July 3.

Sharma, in his plea filed before the apex court, said he was arrested on the ground that he had informed the accused persons about the police raid at Bikru village.

Challenging the claim, Sharma, who is currently in jail, said he was directed by his in charge Vinay Tiwari, Station Officer of the Chaubeypur police station, to remain at the police station.

Sharma said Tiwari told him in the night that he was going in a team to arrest a criminal as per instructions to him on the phone, with further instructions to conduct a cross-checking at the GT crossing road.

“It is further stated that the contents of the alleged General Diary Details itself is a proof and speaks volumes of the lies of the arresting of Petitioner no. 1 (Sharma) showing that he was trying to run away whereas it is a matter of record that Petitioner no. 1 was living in the quarters situated within the premise of the police station,” the plea said.

Filed through advocate Ashwani Kumar Dubey, the petition also alleged that death of an accused namely Amar Dubey in an encounter in Maudaha in Hamirpur district of Uttar Pradesh took place under “suspicious circumstances”.

“It is submitted that the extra judicial killings of all of the above accused shows plentiful the conduct and modus operandi of all the investigative agencies responsible for investigation of the present FIR. It is clearly evident that the institutions tasked with the protection of law and order in the state have taken law into their own hands and have been killing the accused persons as soon as arresting such persons,” the plea said.

The petition has sought protection of Sharmas life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution besides transfer of the investigation to an independent investigative agency.

Earlier, five members of Dubey’s gang were killed in separate encounters.

On July 3, two of his associates Prem Prakash Pandey and Atul Dubey were killed by police in an encounter in Kanpur. On July 8 the police killed another aide Amar Dubey who carried a reward of ₹50,000, in an encounter in Maudaha village in Hamirpur district.

On July 9, Dubey’s two more aides, wanted in connection with the Kanpur ambush, were killed in separate encounters in Kanpura and Etawah districts.

While Kartikeya alias Prabhat was killed in Kanpur when he allegedly tried to flee from police custody, another aide, Praveen alias Bauwa Dubey, was shot dead in an encounter in Etawah.

Kartikeya, who was arrested from Faridabad on Wednesday, was being brought to Kanpur on transit remand when he allegedly snatched the pistol of a policeman and tried to flee.

Vikas Dubey, who was carrying a reward of ₹5 lakh on information leading to his arrest, was arrested from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh on Thursday.

NGO People’s Union for Civil Liberties on Saturday moved the top court seeking that a special investigation team (SIT) probe the killings of Vikas Dubey and his two aides by the Uttar Pradesh police in three separate encounters.