New Delhi, Aug 7 - A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe has found that the July 3 'shootout' in which the Dehradun police killed 24-year-old MBA student Ranbir Singh was staged and he was shot at point-blank range 30 times, according to highly placed sources in the agency.

In its preliminary report, the CBI's Special Investigation Team (SIT) has dismissed the police theory that Singh was trying to escape on a motorbike after stealing a service revolver from a senior policemen and that he was fired upon from a distance.

These findings were confirmed after the SIT conducted a recce of the site and also recorded statements of the witnesses last week.

The sources told IANS here Friday that police personnel dragged the badly bruised Singh out of one of the four police vehicles in the Ladpur jungles and laid him down before firing 30 shots from close range.

'All evidence and clues gathered by us clearly establish it is a fake encounter. They fired 30 gun shots at him from three different makes of firearms. Our investigation also shows that they badly beat up Singh in custody for two hours,' a senior CBI official involved in the investigation told IANS on condition of anonymity.

The police version is that Singh was riding a motorcycle with his two friends July 3 when policemen stopped him at a check post near Dehradun.

They alleged that the three men got into an altercation with a police sub-inspector who had asked them to stop and then fled into a nearby forest after snatching his service revolver. In the ensuing shootout, Singh was gunned down while the other two managed to escape.

No policemen was injured, even as the state police termed it an encounter, a euphemism for shootout.

As the incident led to public outrage, the state government suspended eight police personnel including Senior Superintendent of Police Amit Sinha.

The Lucknow branch of the CBI registered a case July 31 after Uttarakhand Chief Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal recommended the transfer of the probe to the agency.