The UP Government has announced a cash reward of Rs 2.5 lakhs for anyone providing information leading to the arrest of the notorious Kanpur gangster Vikas Dubey. Dubey has gone underground from the night of Thursday-Friday which saw his 100-odd criminal associates gun down eight policemen in cold blood. The police party had gone to arrest him, a wanted criminal, in connection with a murder case. Having been tipped off by someone in the police department itself, Dubey gathered his gang members and ambushed the police party. The FIR registered after the ambush mentions that he was heard yelling at his men, sab ko maar do…koi zinda na jaye (Kill them all. No cop should remain alive.) Eight of the police party, including a Dy. SP, were killed on the spot; some others were injured. Dubey and his associates then made off with the automatic assault weapons of the policemen and other arsenal. They have been untraceable since, while the UP Police is left pondering over the flawed strategy which led to the massacre of its men. A day after, in a fit of vain rage the police razed to the ground the fortress-like home of Dubey, crushing vehicles parked in the compound with the same earthmover Dubey had used the previous night to block the narrow road leading to his house while his men rained bullets from atop houses abutting the road. They also arrested Dubey’s domestic servant and a couple of low-level factotums to try and squeeze information about their master. It seems the Dy. SP who died at the hands of the mafia don had warned his superior about the close link between the latter and the local thana head. His superior ignored the complaint, dismissing it to be borne out of a personal grudge. After the carnage, an examination of the phone records revealed close links with the SHO and a few others of the local police station. They were indeed in regular touch with the don. The SHO has since been suspended and is being questioned on the suspicion that he alerted Dubey about the coming raid. In the meantime, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath lost no time in declaring a cash award of Rs. 1 crore each to the families of the deceased policemen, full salary payment with perks till the time of their retirement and a job in the police department for one member each of their families. A nation-wide hunt for Dubey has been launched, with the police fearing that he could escape to the neighbouring Nepal from the UP border. Meanwhile, the Kanpur ambush by the notorious gangster came as a reminder that despite Yogi Adityanath’s take-no-prisoners approach to dealing with criminal gangs, these were proving hard to be put down. Early on in his stint as chief minister, there was criticism of the CM for having given a free hand to the police to tackle notorious criminals. There were allegations that some gangsters were killed in fake encounters. Such was the fear in the initial months of the Yogi Government that reportedly some criminals arranged to get themselves back into prison.
But the death of policemen in the Kanpur ambush highlights the deep-seated nexus between the police and criminals. Of course, without political patronage criminal gangs will find it hard to survive. Politicians use them for votes at election-time. Between elections they necessarily feel obliged to patronise them for mustering crowds at rallies, for pressuring difficult local-level adversaries, and even for sourcing funds. Spoils of crime are often shared between the police and local-level politicians. Indeed, the way politics has got structured in the last seven decades or so, the national level leaders rely on State satraps for winning elections while the latter patronise slumlords and criminal dons who extort, blackmail the poor and deliver their votes at election-time. Without cleansing the political system, it will be hard to break the police-criminal nexus. Meanwhile, though not in any way connected to the Kanpur incident, the way the constituents of the ruling alliance in Maharashtra are fighting over the transfer of the Mumbai Deputy Commissioners of Police would suggest as if high stakes were involved. Ideally, such postings and transfers ought to be left to the immediate superiors of the DCPs, depending on their record in service and suitability to a particular district. But partisan politics so deeply permeates the police department that even SHO-level postings are now decided at the highest level in the government. Is there any surprise, then, that the first victim in such a corrupt system is the rule of law.
