Vikas Dubey Killing: A passerby said the sound of gunshots were heard in the area.
Gangster Vikas Dubey was killed in an encounter after a road accident this morning while being taken to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh from Madhya Pradesh's Ujjain, where he was arrested yesterday. He was shot dead while trying to escape, the Uttar Pradesh police said.
"The sound that we heard here was of gunshots...When we were coming to see, the police sent us away. We were on our way home," Ashish Paswan, a passerby, told news agency ANI in Hindi.
Just an hour short of Kanpur, the car in which Vikas Dubey was being taken overturned on the highway amid heavy rain.
The gangster, who was wanted in the killing of eight policemen at his village in Kanpur last Friday,
tried to escape after snatching a gun, according to the police. He was shot dead, like many of his accomplices who, according to the police, had also tried to escape from custody.
On being asked how if an ambulance arrived at the spot, another passerby told news agency ANI: "Sab hospital gaye (Everyone has gone to the hospital)."
"Apni gaadi mein se bheja hai (Own vehicle was sent)," the man next to him said.
Vikas Dubey had over 60 criminal cases against him, including murder, kidnapping and extortion.
In a statement, the police said they had tried to make Vikas Dubey surrender but he fired at them. "The car overturned and policemen and the accused were injured. Then Vikas Dubey snatched a gun from an injured policemen and ran. The police team caught up and surrounded him and tried to get him to surrender, but he refused to and started firing. The police had to fire back in self-defence," the Kanpur police said in a statement.
(With inputs from ANI)