If you thought that encounters (between cops and criminals) happened suddenly and could not be predicted in advance, you only have to surf the social media sites to be proven wrong.
The controversial Friday's encounter in which Kanpur gangster Vikas Dubey was gunned down by UP police had already been predicted on Thursday, when Vikas was 'arrested' in Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh.
''Vikas Dubey could be killed while trying to escape from police custody,'' senior UP IPS officer Amitabh Thakur had tweeted on Thursday.
The netizens also knew that Vikas was unlikely to make it to Kanpur alive. Many of them had remarked that they had kept the RIP tweet ready.
Many also said that the gangster could have revealed his relations with the cops and politicians and so he was killed in a staged encounter.
A video in which an MP police official was heard saying that Vikas might not reach Kanpur alive also went viral on the social networking sites. ''I hope not,'' the official is heard saying, when asked by a fellow cop if he thought Vikas would reach Kanpur alive.