Gorakhpur (UP): In a letter to a group of UN human rights experts, paediatrician Kafeel Khan has alleged that he was ‘tortured’ in Mathura jail. Kafeel Khan had been lodged in the jail after he was arrested for allegedly giving provocative speeches in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) during the anti-CAA stir in December 2019.
“I was tortured mentally as well as physically, denied food and water for many days. I was treated inhumanely during months of incarceration in a congested, overcrowded Mathura prison,” Khan wrote to the human rights expert group.
Khan, is now out on bail. He wrote the letter September 17 with reference to their June 26 letter, in which they had urged the Indian government to release him. The human right group comprises independent experts, not the UN staff.
“The use of stringent national security laws/UAPA against political dissenters, in the absence of any appeal, is something to be condemned in all cases,” Khan said Monday when contacted.
Earlier, when he was in jail, his wife Shabistan Khan had written to the UN human rights expert group alleging unlawful detention of her husband.
Dr Khan, a Gorakhpur-based paediatrician, was also arrested earlier and lodged in Gorakhpur jail as one of the nine accused in BRD Medical college case relating to the death of over 60 children in August 2017 allegedly due to the shortage of oxygen cylinders in the hospital.