Lucknow: “The Special Task Force (STF) now has very bad script writers and the Vikas Dubey story proves it. Why would someone, who had surrendered Thursday in Madhya Pradesh to escape being killed, try to escape on Friday,” said a senior police officer, who has been one of the founding officers of the STF in Uttar Pradesh. The opposition in Uttar Pradesh also slammed the Yogi Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh over the encounter.
The functioning of the STF, which has been probing the July 3 incident in which eight policemen were killed, is now facing flak. The STF has been criticised for its botched-up operations, including the killing of Vikas Dubey.
“The biggest failure of the STF is its failure to track down the gangster who was in Kanpur for two days after the massacre. We investigated a similar case of Shri Prakash Shukla in 1997-98. We tracked his every movement before the encounter. Dubey was using his mobile in between but the STF could not pin him down,” the officer said.
A retired DGP, meanwhile, said that Vikas had been eliminated to save some political leaders. “The entire scenario is crystal clear. His photographs with politicians, top government officers had been going viral on the social media. It is obvious that he was better dead than alive. The people know what is the truth and the issue will snowball into a major controversy,” the former top cop said.
Also read: Gangster Vikas Dubey shot dead while trying to flee after car accident
Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav said: “The SUV has not overturned, it is the government that has overturned. The political links of the gangster have been quietly buried in the investigations and people will never know the truth.”
Senior Congress leader Jitin Prasada said: “With the end of Vikas Dubey in custody, the government has ensured that the trail which would have exposed his nexus with people in positions of power ends.
Netizens, too are questioning the killing of Vikas Dubey.
Nilesh Pandit tweeted, “Surrender kiya tha fir kyu encounter kiya? (If he had surrendered then why kill him)?” Surbhi Rajpoot tweeted, “Police killed Vikas Dubey in fake encounter to hide the face of corrupt bureaucrats and police.” Chaiti Narula tweeted, “He just knew too much. This is a classic suggestive sign of #VikasDubey knowing too much about too many politicians and the police force!”
Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) leader Jayant Chaudhary also slammed the BJP government over the ‘encounter rule’ in Uttar Pradesh. He urged all the judges to resign. “After Vikas Dubey’s encounter, all the judges of the country should resign. There is no need of court in BJP’s encounter rule,” Chaudhary said in a series of tweets. “All this drama has been created to save the real culprits of killing eight policemen,” the RLD leader said in another tweet.