But let’s be specific, and discuss the present, the here and now. Let’s state it in stark terms that Uttar Pradesh under the Yogi Adityanath Government since 2017 has descended into a state of chaos and criminal confusion. The state's BJP government's effete fighting and handling of crime and criminals is itself criminal, so to speak. For months after the Yogi took over, the strategy was to ‘encounter’ random criminals, as also particular criminals, who had stepped out of the many UP jails. Notorious and not-so-notorious gangsters, many of them undertrials, said to be eligible for bail, were granted bail, suspiciously so, maybe as part of a well-planned strategy, were traced to their bailiwicks and gunned down in classic Bollywoodish ‘Ab Tak Chappan-style’ encounters!

This sort of quick “justice” became the signature of the Yogi Adityanath Government. And the dread of Yogi Adityanath spread among the dreaded community of ‘bhaiya-criminals’. Hundreds of them – first-timers and ‘many-timers’ – took the name of Yogi Adityanath in hushed tones and quite a few of Adityanath’s top police officers acquired personas of The Grim Reaper for violently murderous criminals.

So much so, came a time when jailed gangsters refused to apply for bail and step out of the “safe” confines of the penitentiary. "Behind bars" was so much more secure than out in the open breathing the fresh air of freedom. But not all were fortunate. Some were “bailed out” and over the first year of Yogi’s rule, during the year preceding the 2019 general elections, scores of alleged criminals were “bumped” off in what looked like shady encounters. Shoot-and-eliminate was never more summary as in that first year of Yogi-Raj.

The Yogi Chief Minister’s reputation as a "doer" was cemented, which also cemented his rule in Uttar Pradesh, and for the common man in the state he was the answer to the lawlessness brought about by previous “criminal administrations” of “casteist” political parties. Therefore, it was drummed into the electorate that ‘Modi-phir-ek-baar’ should be the preferred choice in General Elections 2019, which is how it transpired. The point is Narendra Modi and the BJP/NDA got a second term in office at the Centre to some extent because the Yogi Adityanath Government in Uttar Pradesh went on a criminal-culling operation-encounter before General Elections 2019.

But then, it now looks like that once the immediate goal was fulfilled, the state government nodded off into slumber and the criminals of Uttar Pradesh stepped out of the holes they had retreated into. That’s not all. The ‘Curious Case of Vikas Dubey’, as Arthur Conan Doyle would have captioned it, is proof that there were privileged criminals who did not figure in the list of encounters of the Uttar Pradesh Police. Otherwise, why was it that when so many other criminals, including real petty localized ‘dadas’, were being scientifically gunned down in graphic encounters that the name of the “dreaded Vikas Dubey” survived and did not figure in Yogi Adityanath’s encounter list? It raises the hackles, doesn’t it? As also the hair in the nape of the neck, doesn’t it?

Reeks of suspicion, doesn’t it? Who prepared the encounter list for the Chief Minister to put his thumb impression on? And why’s it that Vikas Dubey with 60 criminal cases – including murder and attempt to murder – against him was way out of the e-list? Come to think of it, how many Indians had heard of ‘Vikas Dubey – "Dreaded Criminal" – before he stepped out of the darkness and murdered eight cops? Even the local media did not talk or write much about him. Such was his criminal clout in Uttar Pradesh.

It’s only now that the skeletons are tumbling out of Vikas Dubey’s cupboards. Many of the skeletons of politicians and netas whose political patronage he enjoyed or commanded to his advantage. And these include BJP politicians and Samajwadi Party netas and Bahujan Samaj Party leaders. It seems Vikas Dubey is every political party’s “blue-eyed” criminal. And this is the chap who gunned down a BJP “state minister” inside a police station!

Can you beat that? Can anybody beat that? No wonder politicians kowtowed to this gangster and kept his fires burning. And the police? So many of them are also skeletons falling helter-skelter from Vikas Dubey’s “JCB-demolished” almirahs. Some of them top police officers who supplied Vikas Dubey with “inside info” so that he could be steps ahead of the good cops such as the eight who went to haul him up and got killed in the bargain because of a few black sheep in the force.

That’s why the initial statement that criminality in Uttar Pradesh runs and spreads both ways. It’s not just the gangster but also the bad cop and the corrupt policeman. It’s the criminal-politician-policeman nexus. A syndicate that has survived decades of encounters both shady and genuine. It’s the system that operates selectively and with impunity. Criminals like Vikas Dubey enjoy patronage and power so long as it suits the politicians and so long as policemen join hands with criminals for dollops of cash, what else?

The government of Yogi Adityanath has much to answer for regarding Vikas Dubey and his charmed and chequered criminal life. The question is will he be caught alive to sing like a canary, or will be shot dead in a dramatic encounter and his mouth shut up, and which will leave many damaging questions unanswered? Seems like Vikas Dubey’s dreaded days are over. He’s too deadly a dumpster-gangster who should be left to yap freely. In James Hadley Chase lingo ‘Consider Him Dead!’ (IPA Service)