Gangster Vikas Dubey was shot dead while trying to escape after a car accident in Uttar Pradesh, the police said on Friday morning, a day after his dramatic arrest in Madhya Pradesh.
Vikas Dubey snatched the gun of a policeman and opened fire, the police said, asserting that they had tried to catch him alive.
Just an hour short of Kanpur, the car in which Vikas Dubey was being taken – one of three in the police convoy — overturned on the wet highway and he tried to escape, the police said.
He was shot dead, like many of his accomplices who, according to the police, had also tried to escape from custody. According to the Special Task Force, which was escorting the criminal, the car flipped after taking a sudden turn to avoid a herd of cattle.
‘The car overturned and policemen and the accused were injured. Then Vikas Dubey grabbed a gun from an injured policeman and ran. The police team caught up and surrounded him and tried to get him to surrender, but he refused and started firing. The police had to fire back in self-defence,’ the Kanpur police said in a statement.
‘Vikas Dubey was injured and taken to hospital. He died during treatment,’ said the statement. He had three bullet wounds to the chest and one to his arm.
On the run since he organized the massacre of policemen at his village in Kanpur last Friday, Vikas Dubey was arrested yesterday at the famous Mahakal temple in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh. ❑