Lucknow: The Justice B.S. Chauhan inquiry commission, set up by the Uttar Pradesh government, has found no evidence of wrongdoing by Uttar Pradesh Police in the encounter killings of gangster Vikas Dubey and his five associates, allegedly staged to avenge the murder of eight policemen in the Bikru carnage.
This is at variance with the findings of the Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was also set up by the Yogi Adityanath government last year to probe the role of police personnel in the Bikru carnage. The SIT had found that over 50 police personnel had a nexus with Vikas Dubey, the main accused in the carnage.
The inquiry commission headed by former SC judge B.S. Chauhan and comprising former Allahabad High Court judge Shashi Kant Agrawal and former Director General of Police K.L. Gupta, submitted its report to the Uttar Pradesh government on Monday after eight months of intense yet futile search for independent witnesses who could give a version that was different from the police narrative about the encounter killings.
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The report is in the process of being filed in the Supreme Court.
While the Bikru armed assault on the police team took place in the night of July 3, the encounter killings of Dubey and his associates happened in broad daylight.
"And yet, there was no independent witness who came forward to depose and give evidence that was at variance with the police version of the encounters," said an official source.
As many as six PILs were filed in the Supreme Court that later approved the UP government's decision to institute an inquiry commission into the encounter killings.
"It is a case of no evidence against the police. The commission gave repeated advertisements in newspapers requesting media personnel who reported on the encounters and termed it as fake, to come forward to give evidence, but no one appeared before the panel," said the official.
The commission had also distributed pamphlets in villages near the encounter sites requesting people to narrate the incidents.