Kanpur: Police Sunday shot at and arrested an accomplice of gangster Vikas Dubey, whose henchmen had killed eight police personnel at a village near Kanpur, an official said.
Dayashankar Agnihotri was injured in the leg during the pre-dawn encounter in Kanpur’s Kalyanpur area. No policeman was hurt.
Police also took into custody a sub-divisional officer (SDO) and another employee at an electricity sub-station, from where power supply was snapped ahead of the failed raid to arrest Dubey in Bikru village near Kanpur past midnight on Thursday.
An employee told police that power to the village was disconnected on the instructions of a caller who claimed to be speaking from the nearby Chaubeypur police station.
Sources said the call came from a number at Chaubeypur police station, whose station officer Vinay Tiwari was earlier suspended as police tried to find out if he had tipped off the gangster about the planned raid.
After being taken into custody, Dayashankar Agnihotri told reporters that Vikas Dubey had got a call “from the police station” about the raid. Dubey then summoned his men to confront the police team, he said.
Kanpur Range Inspector General Mohit Agarwal said Agnihotri, also known as Kallu, was named an accused in the attack on police personnel and there was a reward of Rs 25,000 for his arrest.
“Agnihotri always used to accompany Dubey and was staying at his house,” he told PTI.
Police got a tip-off and tried to stop Agnihotri on the Kalyanpur-Shivli road around 4.30 am when he opened fire at them.
Police later recovered a country-made pistol and two cartridges from him. He has been admitted at Lajpat Rai hospital.
Hours after the Friday morning attack by Vikas Dubey’s men, police shot down two of his alleged accomplices during a combing operation.
Police Sunday announced an award of Rs 1 lakh for information leading to Dubey’s arrest, doubling the amount initially offered.
Over 25 teams have carried out raids at hundreds of locations, including near the India-Nepal border, and in other states, to track him down, police said.
His last known location was Auraiya in UP and police suspect he may fled to Madhya Pradesh or Nepal.
Police sources said Dubey had disabled all CCTV cameras around his home before fleeing and taken the digital recording device with him.
His house was later demolished by police, who on Sunday claimed that they brought it down while hunting for concealed weapons.
Police have named 21 people, most of them from Dubey’s Bikru village, in an FIR lodged in connection with the ambush which killed eight of their men, including a deputy superintended of police.
Another 50-60 unidentified people were involved in the attack, the FIR said.
The Chaubeypur station officer Vinay Tiwari has been sent to the police lines.“He has not been detained. Investigations are going on. If any evidence is found which suggests that Tiwari was part of the conspiracy, then he will be detained,” IG Agarwal said.
On the demolition of Dubey’s house, the IG said this was done after police were told that a cache of arms and ammunition was hidden in a bunker and the wall.
“The walls were broken in order to search for the weapons, and the roof collapsed. A large amount of ammunition was recovered during the digging,” he said.
Police said Vikas Dubey has faced about 60 criminal cases over the past several years. About two decades back, he was accused of killing a senior BJP leader but was acquitted of the charge.
In the early hours of Friday, a police team had walked into a trap allegedly laid by him.
“Dubey’s men were fully prepared. Each of them had weapons. They were using semi-automatic weapons,” Bithoor station officer Kaushalendra Pratap Singh, who was part of the team, told reporters Sunday.
He said not everyone in the police team was armed and claimed they were not expecting an encounter-like situation.
Singh was among the seven people, including a civilian, who were injured in the attack.
He said heavy earthmoving equipment was placed on the road, forcing policemen to negotiate around it in a single file.
PTI