The State Government of Uttar Pradesh has announced formation of a one-member commission to probe the encounter of notorious Kanpur gangster Vikas Dubey. The gangster was killed by police while being shifted to Kanpur from Ujjain allegedly after he tried to escape from the custody.
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Following the encounter, several people, including the Opposition parties, claimed that Dubey to killed in a “fake encounter” to protect the identity of his political masters.
Retired Allahabad High Court judge Sashi Kant Agarwal will head the commission, which will be based out of Kanpur, and have two months to submit its report.
The decision comes a day after a series of petitions were filed in the Supreme Court seeking an independent probe into the killing of Dubey and his associates by the police following the Bikru ambush.
The commission will also investigate the Bikru ambush as well as all the cases of ‘encounters’ between the police and Dubey’s associates. Eight policemen were killed in the ambush while five associates linked to Dubey were killed later by the police in alleged exchange of fire.
Fake encounters in India
Encounter killing is a term used in India and Pakistan since the late 20th century to describe alleged extrajudicial killings by the police or the armed forces, supposedly in self-defence, when they encounter suspected gangsters or terrorists. Some of the killings have been controversial, and critics have alleged that the police created ‘fake encounters’ as opportunities to kill suspects
As per an RTI query filed it was found that 1,782 cases of fake encounter were registered in India between 2000 and 2017.
Union home ministry identified 106 districts in 10 states affected by left-wing extremism (LWE) which included Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh.
An analysis of the fake encounters cases in these states shows that after Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh showed the next highest number of registered cases (94). While Uttar Pradesh has 51 of 794 cases pending, Andhra Pradesh has 54 pending cases from the 94 registered in the state.