Kanpur’s Bikru ambush was planned; women helped in carnage, says chargesheet

The July 3 ambush of a raiding police team in Bikru village of Kanpur Dehat, Uttar Pradesh, was well planned, says the 1,700-page police charge sheet. Filed by the Kanput police in Kanpur Dehat court, the charge sheet also says that information about the raid on gangster Vikas Dubey’s house was leaked by local police and women helped in the ambush, allowing the assailants to kill police personnel and escape.

Eight policemen, including a deputy SP and three sub-inspectors, were killed in the ambush.

The police have charged 36 persons in the case. Six of the assailants, including gangster Vikas Dubey, were killed in encounters and two others are yet to be arrested.

Among the accused are also four females-- Kshama Agnihotri, Rekha Agnihotri, Shanti Dubey, and a minor. Their husbands are also accused in the case.

SP rural Brijesh Shrivastava said police have enough evidences against the accused women. They even provided bullets to the men firing at the police team from three sides, he said. “We will prove all this in the court,” he said.

The police, however, did not charge Manu Pandey, whose purported audio clips talked about the role these women may have played in the ambush. Also it did not make Vikas’s elusive brother Deepu Dubey or his wife Richa accused in the case.

According to police, Vikas Dubey planned the ambush after he was tipped off by local police about the raid. He instructed them that they would also have to loot police weapons. The meeting took place at his house, which the police later razed to the ground. Sub-inspector KK Sharma of the local police spoke to Dubey and his men 13 times that night. The last conversation was with one of accused, Ram Singh, at 11.44 pm — 11 minutes before the police left for the raid.

Sharma spoke about the raid to Ram Singh, who passed on the information to Hiru Dubey who then shared it with Vikas Dubey.

The women named in the charge sheet were part of plan, police said, including the minor who was married just three days before the ambush.