Kanpur: Eight cops in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh were killed early Friday at a village in Kanpur where they had gone to arrest a criminal wanted for killing. The policemen arrived in random shooting from all sides by the criminal and his friends.
A Deputy Superintendent of Police, Divendra Kumar Mishra, three sub-inspectors, and four constables were killed in Dikru village, which is 150 km from state capital Lucknow.
Two of the shooters were killed by the police.
Teams from three police stations had gone to the village in search of the politically connected, wanted gangster Vikas Dubey.
“The aim was to arrest him. There was an ambush. The firing by criminals was from three sides and it was planned,” said Kanpur’s police chief Dinesh Kumar.
Roadblocks were put up along the route to the Bikru village, 150 km from state capital Lucknow.
The police teams went about removing the blocks, including a bulldozer. When they finally reached the village, gunfire broke out from rooftops and caught them by surprise.
Eight policemen died on the spot while seven were wounded.
Signs of the bloodbath are visible on the road that the policemen took to try and reach Vikas Dubey’s house.
According to a statement by UP Director General of Police (DGP) HC Awasthi, Vikas Dubey and other men had put up barricades on the routes that lead to the village.
The excavator stopping the road suggested a coordinated ambush.
Vikas Dubey’s criminal record began in 1990 with a case of murder. Over the years, he accumulated charges of attempted murder, kidnapping, extortion, and rioting.
Vikas Dubey, charged in 60 criminal cases including murders, had been arrested several times but had always escaped conviction. This time too, Vikas Dubey, said to be in his 50s, was allegedly well-prepared for police teams planning to arrest him in a recent attempted murder case.
In 2001, Dubey was charged with the killing of Santosh Shukla, a Kanpur BJP head who was hunted and shot dead inside a police station. Dubey “surrendered” in 2002 but was freed.
Dubey, who has political links and was also a political party member in the past, allegedly keeps an armed group of henchmen in his village. He is feared in the region and wields influence.