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PRAYAGRAJ: On Monday, the Allahabad High Court ordered the immediate release of Dr. Kafeel Khan, who has spent more than seven months in prison for his public speech against CAA and NRC outside the Aligarh Muslim University campus, saying that the pediatrician’s arrest under the National Security Act (NSA) for his alleged hate speech was “bad” and “unsustainable in the eyes of the law.”
In a strong verdict that accused authorities of slapping the NSA’s Khan on a “whim” and invoking charges against him for acting against national integration, the court said his December 12 speech did not foster hatred. nor violence. The court said that, contrary to accusations against Khan that his speech threatened the peace and tranquility of Aligarh, his speech called for national integrity and unity and disapproved of “any kind of violence.”
Give the verdict on a habeas corpus Writ petition filed by Khan’s mother, the court of Judge Govind Mathur and Judge Saumitra Dayal Singh annulled Aligarh DM’s arrest warrant according to the NSA on February 13 and declared the subsequent extensions of detention “illegal”. An Aligarh court had granted bail to Khan on February 10, but he could not be released from Mathura Jail since the DM had added charges against him under the NSA.
On Khan’s alleged hate speech, the court noted: “The speaker (Khan) was certainly opposed to government policies and in doing so he gave certain illustrations, but nowhere does he reflect the eventualities requiring arrest. A full reading of the prima facie speech reveals no effort to promote hatred or violence. ”
In criticizing the DM for his arrest warrant, the court said: “It appears that the district magistrate had a selective reading and a selective mention of some sentences of the speech ignoring his true intention.”
Questioning the Aligarh administration’s decision to make Khan’s speech a basis for his arrest, the court asked why it took two months after the AMU’s leadership for district authorities to add charges against him under the NSA. . “At that time, the only action taken was the filing of a criminal case against Khan for offenses under Section 153A (promotion of enmity) of the IPC,” the court said, adding that “some crimes … ”
There was no move to include the NSA charges even when on February 10, 2020, the chief justice magistrate, Aligarh, accepted a request to release the defendant on bail, the court said, adding: “It was only after his The release order was approved on February 12, three police officers requested the district police chief to approach the DM to invoke the NSA and Dr. Khan was notified of the order for his further arrest.
Apparently, no detention proceedings were initiated for about two months from the day Khan addressed the students.
According to the NSA, a defendant can be detained without charge for up to 12 months if authorities are convinced that they pose a threat to national security or public order. On this, the court observed: “… subjective satisfaction (of the detaining authority) means the satisfaction of a reasonable man that can be reached on the basis of some material that satisfies a rational man. It does not refer to the whim or whim of the authority in question ”.
Previously, Khan had made headlines in 2017 when he, along with eight other people, was arrested for disrupting the oxygen supply to the pediatric ward of GorakhpurBRD Hospital, which allegedly claimed the lives of more than 60 children in one week. All of them, including the then director, remained in jail for nine months before being released on bail in April 2018.
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