The encounter of Kanpur based gangster, Vikas Dubey has grabbed the attention of the nation. Dubey, wanted for the massacre of eight Uttar Pradesh policemen last Friday, was being taken in a police convoy to Kanpur after his arrest. His 6-day run across four states was over when he was arrested from Mahakal Temple in Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain.
According to the Uttar Pradesh police officials, Dubey was travelling overturned and he and other policemen were injured. The criminal snatched a gun from an injured cop and tried to escape. He was surrounded and asked to surrender but he opened fire, forcing retaliatory shooting and was killed.
Many questions are being raised followed by the gangster’s encounter as Dubey was alleged to have links with politicians.
Here are 5 most controversial encounters in India:
Bhopal Jail Break:
The eight SIMI members were lodged at the state’s most secure prison and were held accountable for several cases including offenses punishable with death or life imprisonment.
As per several reports, they had escaped after tying up one guard and slitting the throat of another. They had then opened the lock of the cell with a key and scaled the outer jail wall using a ladder made of bedsheets and wooden pieces.
They were encountered hours after they escaped from Bhopal Jail. The encounter was questioned by many human rights organisations as two videos purportedly of the encounter recorded on mobile phones had surfaced hours after the encounter.
Shootout at Wadala:
From the 1950s to the 70s, Bombay was ruled by one particular gang who did not believe in the law of the land, The Pathans. These men from Afghanistan had come to the city as money- lenders. Later, Manya Surve, the first educated Hindu gangster took over the reign of terror.
On February 12, 1981, Manya, along with the Pathans, planned, orchestrated, and executed the most infamous murder in the history of Bombay’s underworld. Surve was allegedly shot and killed by a Crime Branch team when he was seen exiting a cab to pick up his girlfriend near Ambedkar College in Wadala.
Warangal Acid Attackers:
In December 2008, police in Andhra Pradesh shot dead three men accused of throwing acid on two women. Both of the victims were engineering students of the Kakatiya Institute of Technology. Reports at the time had suggested that they were attacked with acid after one of them turned down the proposal of one of the accused. Srinivas Rao, aged 25, was identified as the main accused along with his associates P Harikrishna and B Sanjay.
Hyderabad rape accused:
On November 29, 2019, four men were arrested for allegedly raping and killing the woman by smothering her and later burning her body, an incident that led to widespread outrage and recalled the horrors of the December 16, 2012 gangrape and murder of a physiotherapy intern in Delhi.
All four accused in the rape-and-murder of a 25-year-old woman veterinarian were killed by Hyderabad Police. However, human rights organisations including Amnesty International have called for investigations to determine if these were extrajudicial killings.
Ishrat Jahan:
A 19-year-old woman, Ishrat Jahan along with three other men were killed in an encounter in 2004. The police had said Ishrat Jahan was part of a terror plot hatched to assassinate Narendra Modi, then the Gujarat chief minister. The encounter became hugely controversial with human rights activists and BJP’s rival parties alleging that it was a targeted killing.
