by A Vaidyanathan
The Uttar Pradesh government has filed a petition in the Supreme Court against the Allahabad High Court’s order that freed a doctor charged under the tough National Security Act for an alleged speech against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
The detention of Kafeel Khan, the doctor from Uttar Pradesh, was “illegal”, the high court had said in its order on September 1, adding the doctor’s speech did not show any effort to promote hate or violence.
In the petition, the UP government alleged Dr Khan had a history of committing offences, which led to disciplinary action, suspension from service, registration of police cases and being charged under the National Security Act (NSA).
Dr Khan was charged under National Security Act for his speech against the CAA at a talk at the Aligarh Muslim University late last year. The Gorakhpur doctor was arrested on January 29. While he was first charged for allegedly promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, charges under the NSA were invoked later after he was given bail on February 10 this year.
He was suspended from Gorakhpur’s BRD Medical College after several children died there in 2017, apparently due to the lack of oxygen cylinders at the government hospital.
A departmental inquiry later cleared Dr Khan of most of the charges, but he found himself in trouble for the allegedly provocative speech in Aligarh over the amended citizenship law.
Introduced in 1980, the NSA empowers the government to detain people, without being charged in court, for up to a year if they suspect that they could disrupt public order, endanger the security of India or its ties with foreign countries.
