Dr Kafeel Khan was granted bail recently after he was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police last month but had not been released.
Lucknow| Dr Kafeel Khan has been slapped with the National Security Act (NSA) over his alleged inflammatory speech at Aligarh Muslim University during the anti-CAA protests there on December 12, 2019.
He was arrested on January 29 from Mumbai after an FIR but was granted bail on Monday. However, even after four days of getting bail, he continued to languish in Mathura jail.
“We got to know today morning that Dr Kafeel has been charged under NSA and now will not be coming out of jail soon. This is simply unacceptable. He is being targeted at the order of the state government,” Khan’s brother Adeel Khan alleged.
The FIR, filed on December 13, says Dr Khan made an attempt to disturb the peaceful atmosphere at the university and disrupt communal harmony.
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Khan was arrested when he was scheduled to visit the Mumbai Bagh protests on January 29 where the women protesters started an indefinite stir against the CAA, in the same mould as Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh.
Two days after the case was registered against Dr Khan, there were large-scale clashes at AMU, where the police were accused of indulging in violence and were seen on video smashing two-wheelers and assaulting students.
Introduced in 1980, the strict National Security Act 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.
Dr Khan was suspended, arrested and jailed for his alleged role in the deaths of over 60 children at a government hospital in Gorakhpur due to alleged oxygen shortage in 2017. In September last year, a UP government report cleared him of all major allegations.
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