Former judge to head Vikas Dubey probe panel, says SC

The top court’s bench, headed by chief justice SA Bobde, directed that the inquiry commission should start functioning within a week and the probe be concluded within two months.

The Supreme Court approved on Wednesday the Uttar Pradesh government’s draft notification to appoint former top court judge BS Chauhan as the head of a three-member inquiry commission to look into the killing of eight policemen as well as the subsequent deaths of gangster Vikas Dubey and five of his alleged associates.

STF and Forensic teams re-enact the events leading to the encounter of slain gangster Vikas Dubey, as part of ongoing investigation of the case, in Kanpur district. (PTI)

The top court’s bench, headed by chief justice SA Bobde, directed that the inquiry commission should start functioning within a week and the probe be concluded within two months. Former high court judge Shashi Kant Agarwal and retired director general of police of Uttar Pradesh KL Gupta.

The bench, which also included justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian said: “Both the July 2/3 incident (when Dubey and his men allegedly killed eight policemen) and the July 10 incident when Dubey was killed have to be touched upon. The first was the motive for the second incident.”

The commission’s probe will also examine how Dubey got bail/parole despite being accused in over 64 criminal cases. “We consider this as the single most important factor that this incident happened,” the judges said.

On July 3, Dubey and his men gunned down a deputy superintendent of police and seven other cops who were attempting to arrest him. In a dramatic week that followed, Dubey went underground while several of his men were killed in police encounters. He was detained in a town in Madhya Pradesh on July 9.

On July 10, while being brought back to Kanpur, he was killed in what police described as escape attempt following an accident of the car Dubey was in.

The commission will hold its sittings in Lucknow and the government has to set it up within a week, providing it space and all secretarial assistance.

A clutch of PILs filed before the court raised doubts over the July 12 decision of the UP government to appoint a one-man commission of justice Shashi Kant Agarwal to conduct the investigation.

The action of the state government to pick justice Chauhan was objected to by one of the petitioners Ghanshyam Upadhyay, a lawyer practicing in Mumbai. The CJI shot back: “Even I would have chosen justice Chauhan.”

It was the court that suggested the UP government choose a judge from the state. A similar enquiry ordered into an encounter in Telangana in December 2019 came to a halt since lockdown restrictions prevented members of the enquiry panel to travel or meet.