Antisocial Justice
In the early hours of 3 July 2020, a team of the Uttar Pradesh police went to the village of Bikru, in Kanpur Dehat district, to arrest the gangster Vikas Dubey on charges of attempted murder. Eight policemen, including a deputy superintendent, were killed in an ambush. A few hours later, the police killed two of Dubey’s relatives. Dubey was declared a fugitive and, six days later, was arrested in the town of Ujjain, in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. On 10 July, as he was being transported back to Kanpur, the police shot him dead—they claimed he had been trying to escape.
Six months later, the terror of Vikas Dubey could still be felt in Bikru. Most villagers would ignore me, or abruptly end our conversation, whenever I brought his name up. There were few men in their twenties to
