India, July 11 -- The death, under mysterious circumstances of Vikas Dubey, a UP gangster, accused of gunning down eight police personnel near Kanpur last week, has raised innumerable questions. On Friday morning, Dubey was shot dead near his village "in an extra judicial killing" by the Special Task Force team, while he was being brought back from Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh. On Thursday, the don had surrendered outside the Mahakaal temple, only to be slain the following day, by the men in khaki.

The sole plausible reason for silencing Dubey was that if he had, in police custody, begun to spill the beans, a number of influential people, including powerful politicians, police officers and bureaucrats would have found themselves implicated i...