A top suspect in dozens of crimes, including the killings of eight police officers last week, was fatally shot yesterday in police custody while allegedly trying to flee, officials said.
Vikas Dubey snatched a gun from officers after their vehicle overturned on a highway near the northern Indian city of Kanpur and tried to flee, police officer Mohit Aggarwal said, adding that Dubey died in an exchange of gunfire.
Dubey, in his 40s, had given himself up in the central town of Ujjain on Thursday after a weeklong search. He was being driven in a police convoy to Kanpur, where the eight police officers were killed.
Photo: AP
He is believed to have links with state politicians and the police. Two police officers were arrested this week for allegedly tipping him off about a police raid on his home on Friday last week.
Amarnath Aggarwal, an opposition Congress party leader, accused police of killing Dubey. “It’s a preplanned murder. It was committed with the motive that Dubey did not reveal the names of people who provided patronage and protection to him,” he said.
Deaths in police custody are not isolated incidents in India.
A report last month by a New Delhi rights group, the National Campaign Against Torture, said at least 1,731 people died in custody last year, which means five custodial deaths a day.
In December last year, police shot dead four men suspected of raping and killing a young female veterinarian in southern India after investigators took them to the crime scene. Human rights groups have been calling for investigations into the deaths.
Dubey’s gang of criminals is accused of fatally ambushing officers who had come to arrest them. They blocked the road with excavators and fired from rooftops, police said.
Five officers were also wounded and the assailants fled before reinforcements could reach the area.
Dubey was allegedly involved in 60 cases of killings, robberies and kidnappings. Among them was the killing of local Bharatiya Janata Party leader Santosh Shukla in a police station in 2001.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS