Clarion India
NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Allahabad High Court to hear a petition filed by the mother of Gorakhpur doctor Kafeel Khan challenging his detention under the stringent National Security Act over a anti-CAA speech in Aligarh.
“We consider it appropriate that the matter be taken up by the Allahabad High Court. The record of the matter be transmitted to the High Court forthwith,” a bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices B R Gavai and Surya Kanta ordered when the plea came up before it.
Aligarh police had booked Khan in December last year, claiming that his address to Aligarh Muslim University students against the NRC and CAA had instigated riots in the city. He had been given bail in the hate speech case but he was not released as the police invoked the stringent act against him.
Yogi government has been accused of targeting Khan unfairly since the deaths of children happened at Gorakhpur college. His family said that his life was in danger in the jail.
Khan came in news first in August 2017, during the tragedy in Baba Raghav Das(BRD) Medical College Hospital, Gorakhpur, regarding the death of nearly 60 infants due to lack of oxygen supply. Khan was initially reported to have acted as a saviour by promptly acting to arrange emergency oxygen supply by paying out of his pocket. Despite being hailed as a hero for arranging cylinders as children gasped for breath, he was named in an FIR registered under Sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent), 308 (attempt to commit culpable homicide) and 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code. It was alleged that he was negligent in his duties, which resulted in a shortage of medical oxygen.
