"Was tortured mentally as well as physically, denied food and water for many days," Dr. Kafeel complains in his letter to UNHR
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New Delhi: Dr. Kafeel Khan, who was recently released from Mathura prison after a seven-month incarceration, has written a letter to United Nations Council of Human rights complaining of the human right violations he faced at the hands of state administration.
Thanking the UN body for urging the Indian government to immediately release human rights defenders, he drew attention towards the suffering and trauma, the whole family are going through for the past 3 years.
"I was tortured mentally as well as physically, denied food and water for many days, and treated inhumanly during my 7 months of incarceration in a congested, overcrowded Mathura prison. Fortunately, I got my NSA and all 3 extensions quashed by Hon'ble High Court Uttar Pradesh, India which called the whole process illegal," Dr. Kafeel wrote.
On June 26, the UN's human rights body had wrote to the Indian government mentioning 11 cases, including those that of Kafeel Khan and Sharjeel Imam, PhD scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
In the letter to the government, the international body had said:
"These defenders, many of them students, appear to have been arrested simply because they exercised their right to denounce and protest against the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act), and their arrest seems clearly designed to send a chilling message to India's vibrant civil society that criticsm of government policies will not be tolerated,"
"Authorities should immediately release all human rights defenders who are currently being held in pre-trial detention without sufficient evidence, often simply on the basis of speeches they made criticizing the discriminating nature of the CAA," it said.
Dr. Kafeel in his letter to UN body quoted the Uttar Pradesh Chief Justice, who dropped the NSA charges slapped against him.
The said order had said, "Dr. Kafeel Khan's speech at Aligarh, "does not disclose any effort to promote hatred or violence. It also nowhere threatens the peace and tranquility of the city of Aligarh. The address gives a call for nationaly integrity and unity among the citizens. The speech also deprecates any kind of violence."