Vikas Dubey encounter: SC closes pleas, asks UP to act on inquiry panel's recommendations

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday closed hearing on pleas seeking relief including re-constitution of a commission to inquire into the encounter of gangster Vikas Dubey and others, and directed the Uttar Pradesh government to act upon the recommendations of the panel.

A bench comprising Chief justice N V Ramana and Justices Krishan Murari and Hima Kohli also directed that the report of the three-member inquiry panel headed by Justice (retd) B S Chauhan of the apex court be put in public domain and uploaded on its website.

The Justice Chauhan panel, in its report, had said there is no suspicion or doubt about the police version of the killing of gangster Dubey and other members of his gang in encounters after the Bikru ambush in Kanpur in July, 2020 as nobody from the public or the media came to contradict the police claim and no evidence was filed in rebuttal.

One of the petitioners, lawyer Ghanshyam Upadhyay, had sought re-constitution of the inquiry commission to inquire into the encounter of the gangster and others.

On August 19, 2020, the top court had dismissed a plea seeking scrapping of the judicial commission.

Eight policemen, including DSP Devendra Mishra, were ambushed in Bikru village in Chaubeypur area of Kanpur when they were going to arrest Dubey and fell to bullets fired from rooftops shortly after midnight on July 3, 2020.

Dubey was killed in an encounter in the morning of July 10, 2020 when a police vehicle carrying him from Ujjain to Kanpur met with an accident and he tried to escape from the spot in Bhauti area, the police had said.