Uttar Pradesh / Gangster Dubey had 3 bullet injuries on chest, 1 on his arm: Hospital

Lucknow: Vikas Dubey, the Uttar Pradesh gangster accused of killing eight policemen last week, was on Friday hit by four bullets in the retaliatory firing by members of the State Task Force (STF) who tried stop him from escaping near Kanpur city, news agency ANI reported.

The 48-year-old gangster was shot at by the police team when he tried to escape after the vehicle he was travelling in met with an accident amid heavy rain in the region. The STF team was bringing him back to Kanpur from Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain city.

He was arrested outside the Mahakal Temple in Ujjain on Thursday and was being brought to Kanpur.

“Vikas Dubey had three bullet injuries on the chest and one on his arm,” Dr RB Kamal, the principal of Kanpur’s LLR Hospital, was quoted as saying by news agency ANI.

Dr Kamal said the condition of the three injured police personnel is stable and that bullets brushed by two of them.

According to a police statement, there was an encounter as Vikas Dubey tried to escape when the sports utility vehicle (SUV) overturned early in the morning.

Vikas Dubey, it said, snatched a pistol from one of the policemen after the accident and tried to run away. He reached a nearby field, was surrounded and asked to surrender.

When he refused to surrender and fired at the team, police personnel shot at the gangster in self-defence, the statement in Hindi said.

Prashant Kumar, UP additional director general of police (law and order) said three sub-inspector, a constable and two STF commandos were injured during the incident.

Kumar said three people have been arrested, six accused killed, seven people sent to jail under section 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and 12 wanted criminals still absconding.

Dubey’s death in a police encounter triggered sharp attacks from opposition parties who alleged that the gangster had been killed to shield the people who had protected him.

Several opposition leaders, who had demanded a thorough probe to unravel the gangster’s political nexus, claimed that the encounter was engineered to bury the facts.

Dubey was on the run since July 3 after he and his men ambushed and killed the eight policemen out to arrest him in his Bikru village.