SC Asks UP Govt to Pay Dues to Kafeel Khan
New Delhi: In what is being seen as a source of relief for Gorakhpur's Dr Kafeel Ahmed Khan and his family, a double bench of the Supreme Court of India on Friday, while declining to interfere with the issue of his suspension, directed the BJP-led Yogi Adityanath government to pay all pending subsistence allowance due to him.
The SC bench, consisting of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice Indira Banerjee also ordered completion of the enquiry regarding his suspension within three months.
On March 7, 2019, the Allahabad High Court, had asked the Uttar Pradesh government to conclude departmental inquiry against Khan within 90 days. The Supreme Court has honoured this order.
Kafeel Khan, Assistant Professor, Department of Paediatrics, at BRD Medical College, Gorakhpur, was suspended in September 2017 for alleged dereliction of duty and private practice.
According to Live Law, the SC bench dismissed the special leave petition filed by Khan against the Allahabad HC’s March 7 verdict, but added that dismissal of the petition should not be understood as SC's approval of the observations made by the High Court.
“The High Court had observed that Khan's non-cooperation was the reason for delaying the disciplinary proceedings,” the report said.
According to Khan, the reason the government was delaying the departmental inquiry was because “ it is protecting the real perpetrators of the BRD Oxygen tragedy. The Yogi government has been sitting on it for more than 20 months because it does not want to expose the corrupt officers, who did not make the timely payment to the gas supplying agency”. In a press statement issued on his behalf by OurDemocracy, a crowdnewsing and crowdsourcing platform, Khan named the District Magistrate, DGME, and both the health ministers as the main culprits, adding that he would continue “fighting until the perpetrators of this crime are brought to justice.”
Khan was represented before the court by Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora and Advocate on Record Fuzail Ahmad Ayyubi, who did the work pro-bono, said the press statement .
Khan was in the news in 2017 when a large number of child deaths occurred in the BRD hospital, Gorakhpur, due to lack of oxygen, and is said to have prevented further deaths by reportedly paying for oxygen cylinders out of his own pocket.
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