AGRA / LUCKNOW: On Thursday, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by the Uttar Pradesh government against the Allahabad high court order that it had overturned Dr. Kafeel Khandetention under National security law (NSA) in September.
“We see no reason to interfere,” said a bench of three judges from India’s Chief Justice SA Bobde and Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian. The criminal cases against Khan will be decided “on their own merits,” the bank added.
Khan was detained in Mathura jail for seven months after he gave a speech during protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act at Aligarh Muslim University, which the government deemed “provocative”. The high court, while allowing his release, noted that his speech does not “reveal any effort to promote hatred or violence.” Instead, it “calls for integrity and national unity … (and) disapproves of any kind of violence.”
For Khan, the Supreme Court decision was a pardon in what has been three years of intermittent legal battles. “My younger brother is getting married today (Thursday). All I wanted was to be there for him, even if the verdict did not go the way I wanted. The last few days, we have been under extreme stress,” he told TOI since Delhi.
Wednesday’s pre-wedding ceremony had been an unsettling event. Khan said he couldn’t sleep at night. “In the morning, I put on a sherwani and walked into my attorney’s office wondering if I would have a chance to see my family before they took me away … I said goodbye to my children before going to court and held on to Ammi jaan “.
His wife, Dr. Shabista Khan, and his mother, Nuzhat Parveen, had been waiting impatiently at the wedding location. “The rituals were underway. But we were all waiting. We didn’t know if he would arrive or be arrested from there,” Shabista said.
After the Supreme Court decision, he called his mother. “Other members of the family joined the video call. We burst into tears.”
Khan has been locked in a battle with the state government since 2017, when more than 70 children died at Baba Raghav Das Medical College in Gorakhpur in just one month because there were not enough oxygen cylinders. Khan was suspended from his post as a nodal officer in the hospital’s pediatric department. “My family and I have been suffering for more than three years. I never did anything wrong,” he said. He has not yet been reinstated.
“I will continue to practice as a doctor and help those who need me,” he said. “So far I have organized more than 100 medical camps. With the help of health activists from around the country, I will do more. No one should be excluded from health care on the grounds of money, age, caste, religion or gender.”
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