Two police sub-inspectors were arrested on Wednesday for tipping off gangster Vikas Dubey prior to the midnight raid at his residence in Choubeypur in Kanpur on Friday last even as sleuths of the Special Task Force gunned down one Amar Dubey, claimed to be one of his closest accomplices.
Both the suspended sub-inspectors — Vinay Tiwari and KK Sharma — were detained for questioning and later arrested, said SP Dinesh Kumar Prabha.
Following the killing of eight policemen, Chaubeypur station officer Tiwari, and three more personnel of the police station had been suspended with the police probing whether Dubey was tipped off about the botched raid.
The failure of Uttar Pradesh police to track down Vikas Dubey in the last five days made him the most wanted don of Uttar Pradesh having a cash reward of Rs 5 lakh on his head.
Meanwhile, in an encounter under Modaha police station limits of Hamirpur district in the early hours of Wednesday, Amar Dubey, was shot dead.
Briefing media persons, UP Additional Director General (ADG), Law and Order, Prashant Kumar, said Amar Dubey along with Vikas Dubey was on the run after the shootout and the State police were making efforts to arrest him. Amar was hiding in Artara village.
According to the police, Amar was the brother of Atul Dubey who was killed in the July 3 gun fight. He got married on June 29, just four days before the shootout in Bikru village in rural Kanpur. He was among the group of people who fired at the police team from the house of Vikas Dubey.
Amar’s mother Chama Dubey has already been arrested for helping Vikas Dubey to abscond. Incidentally, the STF sleuths gunned down Amar only a few hours after Vikas Dubey gave them a slip when they raided a hotel near Badarpur border in Haryana’s Faridabad on Tuesday night.
A senior police official privy to the development said the CCTV footage suggested that a man resembling Vikas Dubey along with two men had stayed in the hotel and left a few hours before the STF, with help of Faridabad crime branch, raided there. He said three suspects identified as Ankur, Prabhat, and Karthikeya were later picked up from Faridabad whose identity cards were used to book the hotel room.
Further raids were carried out at different locations in Faridabad and Delhi on the basis of information extracted from them. Two pistols have also been found which are said to belong to UP Police.
Earlier, as the cops failed to track down Vikas Dubey, the State Government decided to further raise the bounty on him from Rs 2.5 lakh to 5 lakh. Based on the prize money, he has now become the biggest criminal of UP on date having maximum cash reward. Earlier, a reward of Rs five lakh was also declared on dacoit Babuli Kol. Since the murder, the amount of reward has been increased for the fourth time against the criminal Vikas Dubey.
Meanwhile UP STF has picked up Vikas’s brother-in-law Raju Nigam for questioning from Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh. Vikas and Raju were once close friends. Vikas Dubey fell in love with Raju’s sister Sonu (now Richa Dubey). However, after Vikas married Raju’s sister their friendship soured. Nigam, living in Budhar for the past 12 years, revealed that he was not in touch with Dubey for 15 years, and feared he and his son could be booked in a fake case and killed in an encounter.