The overturned car in which police said Vikas Dubey was being taken, at Bhaunti in Kanpur on Friday. (Express Photo by Vishal Srivastav)

Less than 24 hours after he was arrested in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, gangster Vikas Dubey was shot dead in an alleged encounter by the Special Task Force (STF) of the Uttar Pradesh Police.

Police claimed Dubey had fired at them from a weapon that he snatched from an officer after the vehicle in which he was being taken to Kanpur overturned on the highway on Friday morning.

Police had been left with no option but to fire back in “self-defence and in the discharge of their duties”, the STF said in a statement.

The STF team had left Ujjain for Kanpur in a convoy of vehicles around 7 pm on Thursday after they were given custody of Dubey. The alleged encounter took place near the end of the journey after the vehicle carrying Dubey and five policemen tipped over on its side as the driver swerved to evade a herd of cattle in its path, the STF said.

“Accused Vikas Dubey was being brought in a government vehicle by a UP STF team led by Additional SP Tej Bahadur Singh. Around 6.35 am, when the convoy was near Kanhaiya Lal Hospital in the Sachendi police station area of Kanpur Nagar district, a herd of cows and buffaloes suddenly came running onto the highway.

“The driver, who was tired after the long journey, turned sharply to evade the herd, but lost control over the vehicle, which overturned,” the STF said in a statement.

The policemen sitting inside, Inspector Ramakant Pachori, Sub-Inspectors Pankaj Singh and Anoop Singh, and Constables Satyavir and Pradeep Kumar, “suffered serious injuries and became semi-conscious for a moment,” the statement said.

“Taking advantage of this situation, the dangerous and reckless criminal Vikas Dubey snatched the service pistol of Pachori, came out of the overturned vehicle, and started to run on the kuchcha road. When Additional SP Tej Bahadur Singh and other policemen who were in another vehicle reached the spot, Singh was informed by the injured policemen that Dubey had escaped with Pachori’s weapon,” the STF statement said.

Singh and other personnel chased after Dubey, who opened fire at the police team “with the intention to kill”, the STF statement said. “The team reached very close to Dubey in order to catch him alive, but Dubey, in his final moments, continued to fire indiscriminately at the police,” the STF said.

“Left with no option, the police team opened controlled fire in self-defence and in the discharge of their duties. Dubey suffered gunshot injuries in the retaliatory fire and fell on the ground. He was given first aid and rushed to a government hospital where doctors examined him and declared him dead. In the firing by Dubey, constables Shivendra Singh and Vimal Yadav suffered injuries, and were given medical treatment,” the statement said.

The STF has claimed to have recovered from Dubey’s possession the 9 mm pistol that he had allegedly snatched from Pachori.

Later in the day, a panel of three doctors carried out a post mortem examination of the body at Kanpur’s Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital. The procedure has been videographed.

In the evening, Dubey was cremated at the Bhairon Ghat electric crematorium. His wife Richa Dubey was present during the last rites. Dubey’s parents, Ram Kumar and Sarla, stayed away.

Speaking to reporters earlier in the day, Ram Kumar praised the police action. “I tried a lot to stop him (from criminal activities) but he did not listen, and became a goonda. He was never good to me and never took care of me,” he said.

ADG (Law & Order) Prashant Kumar said 21 people had been named, and another 60-70 unidentified persons had been made accused in the killing of eight policemen who had gone to arrest Dubey in his village early on July 3. The killings had triggered the massive hunt for the criminal, which had ended with his arrest in Ujjain’s Mahakaleshwar temple on Thursday morning.

“While three of the accused have been arrested, six have been killed in police encounters. Another seven have been sent to jail for criminal conspiracy. Twelve accused are absconding,” ADG Kumar said.