Kafeel Khan was imprisoned for a speech at the Muslim University of Aligarh during the protests against the CAA (Archive)
Gorakhpur:
In a letter to a group of UN human rights experts, pediatrician Kafeel Khan has denounced that he was “tortured” in Mathura prison, where he was housed after being charged under the National Security Act (NSA) for supposedly giving provocative speeches in Aligarh. Muslim University (AMU) during the anti-CAA uproar in December 2019.
“I was mentally and physically tortured, denied food and water for many days and inhumanely treated during months of incarceration in a congested and overcrowded Mathura prison,” he wrote to the United Nations human rights experts.
Kafeel Khan, who is now out on bail, wrote to the UN human rights group on September 17 with reference to his June 26 letter, urging the Indian government to release him.
The human rights group is made up of independent experts, not UN personnel.
“The use of strict national security / UAPA laws against political dissidents, in the absence of appeal, is something that must be condemned in all cases,” Dr. Khan told the PTI news agency.
Earlier, when he was in jail, his wife Shabistan Khan had written to the UN human rights group alleging the illegal detention of her husband.
Dr. Khan, a Gorakhpur-based pediatrician, was also previously arrested and housed in Gorakhpur Jail as one of nine defendants in the BRD medical school case involving the deaths of more than 60 children in August 2017, allegedly due to a shortage of oxygen cylinders at the hospital.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated channel.)
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