Allahabad HC Dismisses Plea Seeking Judicial Probe Into Alleged Encounter of Kanpur Gangster Vikas Dubey as Infructuous

The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Monday dismissed a petition seeking Judicial probe into the alleged encounter of Kanpur Gangster Vikas Dubey, noting that the UP Government has already taken steps in that direction. The UP Government had constituted a Special Investigation Team, lead by Additional Chief Secretary Sanjay Bhusreddy, to investigate Dubey’s rise and police involvement in his deep-rooted criminal network, last Friday. On the following day, the Government constituted a one member Judicial Commission under Section 3 of the Enquiry Commission Act, 1952, comprised of Justice Sashi Kant Agarwal, former Judge of the Allahabad High Court, to enquire into the subject matter in question within a period of two months. On being informed about the same by Additional Advocate General VK Sahi, the court observed that the petition had been rendered “infructuous”. The petition was filed by a practicing Advocate of the High Court, Nandita Bharti, seeking a direction for constituting a Judicial Commission headed by a former/ sitting HC Judge to probe the alleged encounter in terms of the guidelines framed by the Supreme Court in PUCL & Anr. v. State of Maharashtra & Ors., (2014) 10 SCC 635.