Madhya Pradesh: Taking selfie video of aarti, Vikas Dubey drew attention on CCTV

UJJAIN: Their mornings always begin with the ringing of temple bells. The women have been regulars at Mahakaal for decades, and they had never seen anything like it. Five to six security guards suddenly grappled with a burly man in a white T-shirt and led him away on Thursday morning.
It was only half an hour later that the women, from Rishi Nagar area of Indore, realized they had seen the capture of the most wanted man in India, Vikas Yadav.It was 8.45am.
The women told TOI they had seen Vikas and his two companions taking a video of him participating in the aarti. “We wondered how they smuggled a phone into the temple. It’s banned and we never do. We thought we were in the frame and had half a mind to ask them to share the video,” one of them told TOI, requesting not to be named.
They had gone back and told their families that they had seen for the first time someone taking a video of aarti. Was Vikas documenting his presence in the temple? Apparently, he was spotted and identified on CCTV just then.
The group of women was just behind Vikas and his two companions as they entered the temple and did the circuit with them without realizing they were inches from a gangster accused of killing eight policemen in cold blood.
“He asked a temple employee at the shoe stand if he could keep his bag somewhere. Then he sought to know if he could enter the temple. I told him that he would have to buy a ticket for Rs 250 at the counter,” a temple priest, Gopal Singh Kushwah, told reporters.
The Mahakaleshwar Temple Managing Committee has started an online advance booking system for devotees after the Coovid-19 lockdown, but they also have a counter where a ticket can be bought.
According to witnesses, Vikas took the tickets and requested a back-door entrance but he was refused. He then joined the devotees’ queue. “After praying before the deity, he was walking towards Saptarishi temple (a smaller temple in the Mahakaal compound), when we heard the commotion and saw him being tackled,” a woman said.