Dubey crime saga: Four arrested, SIT formed and ED ready for probe as investigations gather pace

And back in his Kanpur village Bikru, the scene of the July 3 ambush in which eight policemen were killed, Rapid Action Force was deployed and police vehicles circled the area, breaking the hush with announcements asking people to come forward with information. The Uttar Pradesh government set up a special investigation team to investigate the connivance of the local police as the three-decade crime saga pivoting around the 47-year-old, who faced 61 criminal cases, including eight of murder, neared its end.

Four men were arrested, two in Maharashtra and two in Madhya Pradesh, and the ED prepared to probe slain gangster Vikas Dubey’s assets and transactions on Saturday, a day after he was gunned down in an open field near Kanpur while allegedly fleeing police custody. As authorities began scripting the epilogue of the Vikas Dubey crime files, his wife and son, who were picked for questioning by the police, returned to their home in Lucknow after cremating him. And back in his Kanpur village Bikru, the scene of the July 3 ambush in which eight policemen were killed, Rapid Action Force was deployed and police vehicles circled the area, breaking the hush with announcements asking people to come forward with information.

The Uttar Pradesh government set up a special investigation team to investigate the connivance of the local police as the three-decade crime saga pivoting around the 47-year-old, who faced 61 criminal cases, including eight of murder, neared its end. The SIT will be headed by Additional Chief Secretary Sanjay Bhoosreddy and will submit its report by July 31 after looking into all angles, said a statement in Lucknow. The SIT will also probe what action was taken to cancel the bail of "such a dreaded criminal", what action has been taken against him under the Goonda Act, the National Security Act, Gangsters Act, and if there was any laxity and at what level, it added. The police forces of several states joined the investigation into the case that had the nation in thrall the entire week, each step of the hunt, his arrest and his encounter death being followed closely, The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) of Maharashtra Police arrested two men from Thane. Arvind alias Guddan Ramvilas Trivedi -- Dubey’s aide who was allegedly involved in the July 3 ambush when a police team going to arrest the gangster in Bikru walked into a trap and fell to a hail of bullets fired from rooftops -- was arrested in Thane along with his driver Sushilkunar alias Sonu Tiwari. Both had fled after the killings, said Vikram Deshmane, Superintendent of Police, ATS.

In Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior town, Uttar Pradesh Police arrested two men for allegedly giving shelter to two of Dubey’s accomplices, Shashikant Pandey and Shivam Dubey, who are also believed to be involved in the July 3 ambush. Vikas Dubey had been on the run since then and was arrested from Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain town, about 470 km from Gwalior, on July 9. He was picked up at the city’s famed Mahakal temple and shot dead early next morning on the outskirts of Kanpur by UP Police, who claimed he was trying to flee after the car carrying him overturned on an isolated stretch of road slick with rain. According to a statement from the Special Task Force, the driver had tried to avoid cattle on the road. Enforcement Directorate officials said they are set to file a money laundering case and probe the alleged illegal transactions and tainted assets created by the dead gangster, his family members and associates.

The agency's zonal office in Lucknow wrote to the Kanpur police on the matter on July 6, seeking all FIRs and chargesheets filed against him and his linked persons and the latest update in all these cases. The ED, officials said, will soon file a complaint under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to probe criminal proceeds of crime that were allegedly generated by Dubey, his associates and family members and if this money was subsequently used for the creation of illegal movable and immovable properties.

Over two dozen named and 'benami' assets linked to Dubey and his family in Uttar Pradesh and some adjoining areas, bank deposits and fixed deposit receipts are under the scanner of the central probe agency, they said. It is also seeking details from other law enforcement agencies about possible undisclosed foreign assets of Dubey and others.

As investigation into the man who had escaped the police dragnet for 30 years and was believed by many to personify the politician-police-criminal nexus picked up pace, his village in Bikru was quiet, like a lull after the storm. Most people stayed indoors and nearly 60 policemen kept vigil outside Dubey’s house, which was demolished after the ambush. Police personnel made announcements asking people to come forward within 24 hours with information about those who had snatched police weapons. If they failed to do so, action would be initiated. In Lucknow, Dubey's wife Rachna, their son and domestic help came back home after his cremation in Kanpur the night before. They were picked up for questioning and kept at a ‘mahila’ police station in Kanpur. A police official said Richa Dubey and the maid were questioned for more than five hours. Kanpur Jail Superintendent R K Jaiswal told PTI that they not taken to the district jail or the makeshift jail in Chaubeypur near Bikru due to the coronavirus pandemic.

They have not appeared in public since the cremation in Kanpur on Friday, when a distraught Richa Dubey said her husband "did wrong and deserved his fate". The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has moved the Supreme Court for an SIT probe into the killing of Vikas Dubey and his two aides in Uttar Pradesh, saying the police version of the encounter of the gangster "raises many serious questions".

The civil rights organisation, which had moved the apex court seeking an SIT or CBI probe into UP police encounters between January 2017 and March 2018, has filed a fresh interim plea in its pending PIL urging the court to set up a panel headed by a former SC judge to probe the encounters and the nexus between criminals and politicians. It said a police encounter is a "serious crime and an offence against the entire society".