Vikas Dubey case: Congress 'purifies' Ujjain temple gate

Congress leaders performed a purification ritual at the entry gate of Mahakal temple and said that the purification made because the dreaded criminal, Vikas Dubey had entered the Mahakaleshwar temple.

Bhopal: Congress leaders on Saturday performed a "purification" ritual at the entry gate of Mahakal temple in Madhya Pradesh's Ujjain alleging slain gangster Vikas Dubey was made to surrender on the campus of the famous shrine as per a "conspiracy" on Thursday.

Dubey was arrested outside the temple after purchasing prasad and an entry ticket to the shrine.

He was killed in an encounter by the UP Police after he tried to flee following a road accident at Barra area in Kanpur on Friday morning.

A group of leaders of the Congress performed "purification" by chanting mantras and sprinkling Ganga Jal (water of the Ganga river which is considered holy) at "Shankh Dwar" of the temple, said former minister and MLA Sajjan Singh Verma.

"We performed purification as a dreaded criminal had entered the Mahakaleshwar temple," he said.

However, it was not clear if Dubey was arrested immediately before he could enter the temple, or later when he came out of the temple after performing darshan.

Verma alleged Dubey was made to surrender on the campus of the temple under a conspiracy.

"State Home Minister Narottam Mishra has been making false claims that Vikas Dubey was arrested on the basis of intelligence input. What was this intelligence doing when Dubey travelled a lot of distance in MP before reaching Ujjain...The BJP government in the state is protecting criminals," he alleged.

The Congress had on Thursday demanded a high-level probe into Dubey's "safe exit" from Kanpur and the sequence of events leading to his arrest in Ujjain.

The notorious criminal had been on the run since eight policemen were killed allegedly by his henchmen when they tried to raid his house in Kanpur district on July 3.

Reacting to the allegations raised by the Congress, state BJP spokesman Rajneesh Agrawal said the opposition party should not drag Mahakal temple into politics.

"Law and order situation was very bad when the Congress was in power in the state. On the contrary, law and order has been a top priority of the ruling BJP," he said.

Agrawal alleged that mafia cartels thrived whenever Congress helmed the state, first under Digvijay Singh and later under Kamal Nath, whose government collapsed in March this year. PTI