By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-07-10 12:35:43
Vikas Dubey has been eliminated. He was killed in an encounter after he allegedly tried to escape after the vehicle in which he was being brought to Kanpur met with an accident and turned turtle. Dubey allegedly tried to escape and fired at the policemen escorting him and was killed in the exchange of fire. With him have also been eliminated all that he knew and the names of all those who helped him all these years to establish his dubious empire.
Persons like Vikas Dubey are a threat to everyone when they are caught. From politicians to people in local administration, from the lowly havildar to the top police officer and businessmen, most people have relations with criminals like Dubey all over India and when his ilk are arrested, all these people feel threatened that he will disclose their name and they will be sucked in the cesspool that would emerge. Not many such top criminals are brought to justice. They are eliminated either when they try to 'escape' or are killed in custody.
Since Dubey is an old hand, it is obvious that even if the ruling dispensation has helped him after 2017, he has had the backing of both the Samajwadi Party (despite Akhilesh Yadav's tweet criticizing the Yogi government by saying that "Darasal ye car nahi palti, raj khulne se sarkar palatne se bach gayi hai,") and the Bahujan Samaj Party when they were in power. The kind of nefarious activities he indulged in could not have been possible to carry out without the full backing of top politicians and police officers. He might have had contacts in Delhi too. It was important for the agencies to have questioned him and expose the network.
While the UP government will crow that it has eliminated one more dreaded criminal, the matter was not just of crime and the criminal. Unless it is known who helped him, when and how, we will never know how these networks function. In the absence of such knowledge, checks and balances cannot be devised to prevent criminals from using such people or red flags from appearing when such people are approached by criminals.
There must be a thorough inquiry into the matter. It needs to be found out whether the protocol was strictly followed in bringing Dubey from Ujjain. Did the officers who were escorting him have proper clearance? How did the mishap happen on the road so near to Kanpur? Was his gang tipped-off and did they 'arrange' the mishap in order to free him? How did Dubey get a firearm? These questions need to be answered and heads should roll in UP police and district administration once the truth comes out.