Why is Dr Kafeel Khan Still In Jail On The Eve Of Independence Day? BY BETWA SHARMA
NB: If there is even a shred of conscience left in our judiciary and bureaucracy someone will take steps for the immediate release of this honest citizen, whose only crime was to do his duty as a doctor. Perhaps it is also a crime to criticise the government of the Sangh Parivar; especially if one happens to have a Muslim name? This government has reduced itself to a vindictive mafia. The concept of rule of law has been thrown to the winds, and the Indian state is rapidly being reduced to a faction. Will the Supreme Court intervene? DS
Dr
Kafeel Khan’s unending ordeal is a vivid illustration of how the BJP has bent
India’s institutions to incarcerate anyone who dares to point out the
government’s failings. In the three years since Kafeel Khan became
famous as the doctor who ran from pillar to post hunting for oxygen cylinders
when the district hospital in Gorakhpur ran out of liquid oxygen on 10 August,
2017, the Bharatiya
Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh has
never stopped prosecuting and jailing him.
As of
date, the 37-year-old paediatrician has been in jail for 480 days. He is
currently in jail under the draconian National Security Act, which allows for a
person to be held without charge or a lawyer for one year. Back in
2017 Khan’s actions cast a spotlight on the shocking disrepair in Gorakhpur’s hospital,
newly anointed Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s electoral
bastion, that he had won with ever increasing margins for 20 years. In all, 63
children died
at the Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical
College hospital from 7-12 August that year.
As the
numbers of dead children kept rising, the UP government claimed the deaths were
due to encephalitis - rampant in the Gorakhpur - not the lack of oxygen. But
there was no covering up the fact that the hospital had defaulted on a Rs 68
lakh bill to the liquid oxygen supplier. Khan was
a junior doctor at the hospital, and off duty on 10 August, but an inquiry set
up by Chief Minister Adityanath on 12 August, concluded that he was medically
negligent and corrupt. He was suspended from the medical college on 22 August
and booked for crimes under Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption
Act on 23 August. He was arrested on 2 September and spent almost nine months
in the Gorakhpur district jail before the Allahabad High Court on 27
April ruled there was no evidence of medical negligence and
granted him bail.
When a
UP government inquiry cleared him of medical negligence and corruption on 27
September, 2019, the government summoned the media the next day and denied
giving him a clean chit. On 3 October, the UP government announced another
departmental inquiry with fresh allegations against him. Khan, a
father of a three-year-old girl and a 15-month-old boy, has been jailed
multiple times. The author of two medical books is still suspended from BRD
Medical College. Two other doctors, who are out on bail in connection with the
liquid oxygen debacle of 2017, have been reinstated. His younger brother has been shot at by
unidentified assailants. His older brother has been repeatedly harassed by
investigating agencies and his business was ruined for two years.
The
Habeas Corpus petition his 65-year-old mother, Nuzhat Perween, filed on 28
February has been heard twice in the Supreme Court and 15 times in the
Allahabad High Court. In the
Supreme Court on 11 August, Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde said the matter
involved the “liberty” of the applicant and “requested” the High Court to
settle it within 15 days of the next hearing. Supreme
Court advocate Indira Jaising, who is representing Khan, said she was “shocked”
by the long delay in processing a Habeas Corpus petition.
“As a
practising lawyer, this is unacceptable to me Covid or no Covid,” she said.
“Liberty cannot be negotiated away by delay in hearings for any reason whatsoever
including technicalities. Access to justice itself is a fundamental
right, how can it be defeated by delays?” Khan’s
unending ordeal, for merely doing his duty, and trying to save lives, is a
vivid illustration of how the BJP, both in the centre and the states where it
is in power, has bent India’s institutions - courts, the police, and the
country’s draconian laws - to incarcerate anyone who dares to point out the
government’s failings... read more
