Kanpur: Videos of events that led to the encounter of gangster Vikas Dubey are contradicting the claims made by the Special Task Force (STF) that he was shot dead Friday morning when he tried to escape.
Vikas Dubey was wanted for the massacre of eight policemen in Bikru village July 3 and was being brought o Kanpur from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh from where he was taken into custody on Thursday.
The UP Police said that the car in which Vikas Dubey was travelling overturned and he and other policemen were injured. The criminal snatched a gun from an injured cop and tried to escape, the police said. He was surrounded and asked to surrender but he opened fire, forcing retaliatory shooting in which he was killed.
A video of the three cars crossing a toll booth at around 4 a.m. shows that Vikas Dubey was in a different car — not the one that is seen tipped on its side after the accident on the highway 30 km from Kanpur.
There is no comment yet from the police on the mysterious car switch.
Another video taken at around 6.30 a.m., just half an hour before the encounter, shows media cars chasing the convoy being stopped.
When mediapersons questioned the SSP, Kanpur, on being stopped, the officer chose not to respond.
An eyewitness said that he had heard gunshots in the area but the police asked them to leave.
“We heard sounds of gunshots. When we came here, we were sent away. There was no accident at that time,” Ashish Paswan, a passer-by, told reporters.
Another video clip that casts a shadow on the police account of the encounter is one in which Vikas Dubey is brought to the hospital with blood smeared over his chest.
The police said that he ran on wet mud since it was raining at that time, and fell after being shot at. However, there was no mud on his clothes and his trousers were absolutely clean.
(IANS)