New Delhi, Aug 7 - A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe has found that 24-year-old MBA student Ranbir Singh was shot at point-blank range 30 times by Dehradun police, giving lie to the police version that the youth from Ghaziabad was killed while trying to escape on a motorbike after stealing a service revolver from a policeman.

In its preliminary report on the July 3 incident, the CBI's Special Investigation Team (SIT) has dismissed the police theory after a team last week inspected the site and recorded statements of the witnesses. The SIT team was camping in the Uttarakhand capital for three days.

Highly placed sources privy to the investigations said police personnel dragged Singh, badly bruised after being beaten up in the lockup, out of one of the four police vehicles in the Ladpur jungles near Dehradun and lay him down on the ground 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 checkpost 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. Police alleged that this resulted in a shootout in which Singh was killed while his friends managed to escape.

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

As the incident led to public outrage, the Uttarakhand 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.