–TheNewsweb Special Correspondent
The killing of eight policemen, including a Deputy Superintendent of Police rank officer and three other officers, in Bikeru village of Kanpur district late on July 2 at the hands of Vikas Dubey gang has exposed limitations of the the policy of encounter (thok do) in Uttar Pradesh. It at the same time raised a very pertinent question: was the killing of criminals by police in shoot out only confined to the outlaws of certain castes or communities?
Why Vikas Dubey, the dreaded gangster not gunned down earlier by the police of the Yogi government when it has taken credit of eliminating so many in the past three years? After all Vikas has a 30 year old record of heinous crimes yet he was still at large in the state whose police got a pat on the back not only from the chief minister Yogi Adityanath but even by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi as late as on June 26.
It seems that the UP police is selective in its campaign against the dreaded criminals, obviously because of the right political connection.It needs to be mentioned that Vikas is one of the rare criminals who had in 2001 shot dead a minister of state in the Rajnath Singh government and that too in a police station in Kanpur district.
The victim minister Santosh Shukla, like Vikas was also a Brahmin, the caste which has a big influence in the state politics.Santosh, it was then said, fell victim of the intra-BJP tussle. Thus it was clear that Vikas had the political patronage of the ruling party even then. That is why he soon got bail in such a sensational murder case.
But he has links in other political parties too. That is why he had survived for so long though he had over 60 serious cases against him.He is considered as a hero by many of his castemen and like all underworld dons has some support in the system. Now senior police officers are suspecting that he might have got the prior information of the raid by a party of 20 armed police personnel.
The killing of the policemen also revealed the poor planning and intelligence of the police. It is strange that he could not be liquidated or arrested even when the traffic movement in the post-lockdown days are quite thin.The failure of the Yogi government on this front has silenced the garrulous BJP leaders as well as social media warriors in its camp as never before so many cops have been so brutally murdered and bodies beheaded. It needs to be mentioned that the killers of police inspector Subodh Kumar Singh of Bulandshahar too have got bail.
