60 cops at Vikas razed house, locals tightlipped

Bikru (Kanpur) (Agencies): There was an eerie silence outside the demolished house of gangster Vikas Dubey where around 60 policemen are keeping a hawk-eyed vigil after the news spread that he was killed in an encounter on Friday.

The policemen, most of whom are deployed on daily shifts, were sitting on wooden beds under a Neem tree, watching a steady stream of mediapersons arriving with a variety of questions.

But the scribes are welcomed with silence as the policemen and locals are unwilling to speak.

A broken baseball bat, damaged tractors, and some two-wheelers and an SUV are seen as one enters the house using a ramp -- signs of what it was before the Kanpur administration demolished it on Saturday.

Some statuette of Lord Shiva, Parashurama, goddess Durga and Radha-Krishna are kept on an unused electrical equipment under a Neem tree. The walls of the house lay demolished, and the barbed wire used for fencing are on the ground with damaged parts of vehicles all around. Among the debris lies a new mattress in a room that has a ceiling fan mounted.

The house is around 18 km from Chaubeypur police station, where a new station officer has taken over, after all the policemen posted there were shunted out after the Vikas Dubey gang ambushed and killed eight cops who went to arrest him.

The new SHO, however, politely refused to speak. Locating Dubey's house was not very difficult as everybody in neighbouring villages knows by now where the dreaded criminal lived in the area. They were willing to tell the direction.           

But, the scene at Dubey's village Bikru was quite opposite: people remained indoors and refused to speak about him and the killing of eight cops he was alleged to have masterminded.

Somalu (50), when asked about the incident, said that he is from a neighbouring village, and is a labourer and does not know much.

When asked whether he has got any help from Vikas Dubey, he said,  “No.” He refused to speak further.

Dogs barking at strangers and the cry of peacock break the cycle of silence and uneasy calm the village has witnessed over the past few days.   Dubey was accused of masterminding an ambush at his Bikru village near Kanpur on the night of July 2. Eight policemen, including DSP Devendra Mishra, were killed, triggering a manhunt for him.

Madhya Pradesh police arrested him in Ujjain. He was being brought back to Kanpur by UP police, who claim they shot him when he tried to escape.