Vikas Dubey encounter: Supreme Court dismisses pleas seeking removal of members of inquiry commission

Vikas Dubey encounter: The Supreme Court Tuesday dismissed the pleas seeking removal of former high court judge, Justice (retd) Shashi Kant Agarwal and retired Uttar Pradesh Director General of Police (DGP) K L Gupta, from the three-member inquiry commission set up to probe into the encounter killing of gangster Vikas Dubey.

A bench headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde said it would not allow the petitioners to cast aspersion on the members of the inquiry commission, which would probe into the killing of eight policemen and the subsequent encounters of Dubey and five of his alleged associates.

The bench, also comprising Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian, perused the media reports pertaining to interviews by Gupta and said the inquiry would not be vitiated as there are former judges of the apex court and the high court as part of the commission.

The top court was hearing two applications filed by petitioners Ghanshyam Upadhyay and Anoop Prakash Awasthi seeking removal of members of the commission.

The apex court had on July 22 approved the Uttar Pradesh government's draft notification for appointing former top court judge, Justice (retd) BS Chauhan, as the chairman of the three-member inquiry commission.

Eight policemen, including DSP Devendra Mishra, who were ambushed in Bikru village in Chaubeypur area of Kanpur when they were going to arrest Dubey and fell to bullets fired from rooftops shortly after midnight on July 3.

Dubey was killed in an encounter in the morning of July 10 when a police vehicle carrying him from Ujjain to Kanpur met with an accident and he tried to escape from the spot in Bhauti area, the police had said.