Exclusive: This is what Special Task Force wanted Kafeel Khan to Confess in Jail

Dr Kafeel Khan, Gorakhpur’s modern day Maseeha who is seemingly abhorred by the Uttar Pradesh government, in an exclusive interview with GAWAH reveals what the Special Task Force wanted him to confess in jail. In the Kafeel Khan vs State of Uttar Pradesh case, the Allahabad High Court did not find him guilty. Infact, it dislodged the order against Kafeel Khan terming the use of National Security Act to arrest him “illegal” and ordering his immediate release.

Here are excerpts from the interview.

According to Dr Kafeel Khan, the STF team alleged that he was making a dangerous formula, a deadly powder that would kill thousands of people. They wanted to me confess that I was “making a poisonous medical formula secretly to use it to kill thousands of people.” While such allegations may seem coherent with a sinister plot of a Bollywood movie, they meant life and death for Dr Kafeel Khan and his family, whose suffering hasn’t ceased since the first incident – the BRD Gas Tragedy.

Soon after, the family was subject to stigma, bore the mental and phsycological abuse after he was accused of child deaths in 2017, and suspended form his duty. At the time, Dr Kafeel Khan was the nodal officer of 100-bed AES ward at the BRD Hospital at the time. He was released and arrested again with more serious charges under National Security Act.

It was while interrogation after this arrest that the STF wanted such confession, he said.

he Allahabad High Court on Tuesday set aside the National Security Act order passed against Gorakhpur doctor Kafeel Khan, terming it illegal and directed the Uttar Pradesh government to forthwith release him from jail

Despite alleged physical abuse and police high handedness, the pediatrician who was proved innocent in a court trial for the infamous BRD Gas tragedy reiterated the purpose of his profession in clarification: “I am a doctor. My duty is to save lives. Not take them.” True to his words, Kafeel Khan’s act of heroism where he tried to save several children dying due to paucity of piped oxygen at the BRD Medical College Hospital, is testified by his acquittal from the case, the thousands of his fans in parents of young children and youth of Gorakhpur, and his grand welcome back to home by the locals after he won the case against the BJP led Yogi Adityanath’s government in Uttar Pradesh.

Speaking to GAWAH, Dr. Kafeel Khan, also said that the STF allegedly wanted to draw confessions that were ridiculous and fictional. He alleged that the STF team told him that he visited Japan to conspire against the government in India, which he denied. He said “I had to tell them how could I travel when my passport was still under custody?”

This is the not the first time that Dr. Kafeel Khan has been targeted. In June 2018, 34 year Kashif Jameel, Kafeel Khan’s brother suffered three bullet shots on his right arm, neck and chin at the hands of unidentified assailants on motorbike. Kafeel Khan took to social media and announced that he ‘wouldn’t bend’ referring to attacks on his brother. He audaciously questioned how was it possible for the bikers to shoot at his brother at a place that was just 500 meters away from Gorakhnath Temple “where the UP Chief Minister was staying at the time”.

“I was tortured mentally as well as physically, denied food and water for many days, and treated inhumanely during months of incarceration in a congested, overcrowded Mathura prison,” he wrote to the United Nation human rights expert group after being released on bail. His letter to the United Nations dated 17th September is in continuation to organization’s support he received after his wife Shabista Khan first wrote to the UN on his behalf in June this year.  The UN had then urged Indian government to release him.