On May 10, a division bench of Hon’ble supreme court of India comprising Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Indira Banerjee ordered the enquiry regarding suspension of Dr. Kafeel Khan to be concluded timely and has further directed the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh to pay all subsistence allowances payable to Dr. Kafeel Khan pending his suspension.
New Delhi: On May 10, a division bench of Hon’ble supreme court of India comprising Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Indira Banerjee ordered the enquiry regarding suspension of Dr. Kafeel Khan to be concluded timely and has further directed the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh to pay all subsistence allowances payable to Dr. Kafeel Khan pending his suspension.
Dr. Kafeel was represented before the Court by Senior Advocate Ms. Meenakshi Arora and Advocate on Record Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi.
In a video posted on his Twitter account, Dr. Kafeel Khan stood in front of the Supreme Court and spoke about the order. He said that the Yogi government will have to speed up the trial and pay him subsistence allowance pending for 20 months.
In the video, he said that the Yogi govt wants the case to remain suspended so that an enquiry against the real culprits is not taken up. He named the two doctors and said that their greed for 10% commission had led to 70 children dying at the BRDO Hospital. He was thankful to the Supreme Court for giving him relief during Roza.
A Twitter campaign to revoke Dr. Kafeel Khan’s suspension order was announced on March 15. “It’s been 18 months and I am still suspended. Even though the High Court has given me a clean chit, the Yogi government is neither revoking my suspension nor letting me serve,” he said announcing the campaign, adding that he was being punished for a crime he didn’t commit and he needed public support.
He has urged Twitter users to use the hashtag #RevokeDrKafeel and use links of the #BRDOXYGENTRAGEDY in their tweets and urge the government to revoke his suspension. “Please help me to raise my voice. I just tried to save innocent kids,” he said.
In December 2018, talking straight from the Gorakhpur criminal court, Dr. Kafeel Khan said that things have not changed much in the last one and a half years. “What should have been finished in 90 days since the Supreme Court order, is still going on one and a half years later. No enquiry has begun,” he said.
In September, suspended paediatrician of BRD Medical College Hospital Dr. Kafeel Khan was arrested by Bahraich police for allegedly creating nuisance at the district hospital and later granted bail. A day after he was granted bail, Gorakhpur police arrested him and his brother for allegedly opening a bank account in a nationalised bank using fake documents.
He was arrested following deaths of around 30 children in August at the BRD Medical College. The kids had allegedly died of disruption in the oxygen supply in August 2017. In April 2018, Khan got bail in the case but has been mired in different conspiracies along with a vicious attack on his brother ever since he decided to take on the authorities.
Dr. Kafeel Khan, the head of the encephalitis ward in the hospital, managed to save many lives and the parents in the hospital said that had it not been for his work, the number of deaths could have been higher.
However, this did not make Kafeel Khan a hero in the eyes of the administration. Khan was booked for criminal conspiracy, attempt to commit culpable homicide and criminal breach of trust by a public servant, among others. The police filed the chargesheet in November 2017.
Lodged in a Gorakhpur jail since September 2, 2017, Dr. Kafeel Khan in his letter alleged that he and others are being made “scapegoats” for an “administrative failure” at a higher level.
In one of the most extensive interviews, Dr. Kafeel Khan spoke to Human Rights activist Teesta Setalvad on the chilling accounts of what happened during the tragic 48 hours in August 2017. Dr. Khan was hailed as a hero initially and in a day’s time, he was haunted as the most wanted. Even though the public got to know that it was the lack of oxygen which caused the deaths of children, we do not know everything that happened in-between.
Dr. Kafeel Khan dismissed point by point, all propaganda to the contrary. He also went on to describe how Yogi warned him and how he had to pay a heavy price for doing his duty. In one of the most chilling disclosures, Dr. Khan sought everyone’s attention to what happened in the other departments of the hospital on the same days. The liquid oxygen had run out of supply to all the other departments as well, but nobody talked about it.