Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath government has been ordered by the Allahabad High Court to complete its enquiry against suspended paediatrician Dr Kafeel Khan of Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College within three months.
It must be recalled that the Yogi government had made Khan the scapegoat in the deaths of many infants due to lack of oxygen in Gorakhpur even though he had tried to save lives by bringing private oxygen cylinders in his car after the oxygen supply in the hospital had exhausted.
The tragedy which took place in August 2017 had left at least 70 infants dead within 54 hours due to Japanese Encephalitis.
Meanwhile Dr Kafeel Khan said that he will move to Supreme Court if the case is not completed. National Herald has quoted him as saying, “Let us see if they complete the case. We still have the option of going to the Supreme Court. The UP government has lied in court that I was not cooperating with the enquiry. If that is the case, then why are the other doctors still under suspension? We are going to file a review petition against this response. The High Court had given me a clean chit when they gave me bail after being in jail for nine months. They said I was not involved in the tendering of oxygen.”
Saying that he has written 27 letters to the departmental enquiry team headed by Himanshu Kumar, DGME KK Gupta and the Chief Minister regarding the case, Khan has demanded an enquiry into the role of the two health ministers in the Yogi government—Sidharth Nath Singh and Ashutosh Tandon— for ignoring the 14 letters written to them by the supplier of liquid oxygen.
It must be recalled that the government in court had also agreed that the infants had died due to natural causes and not due to a lack of oxygen supply. Responding to an RTI query, the government had also accepted that there was a shortage of liquid oxygen for 54 hours in BRD medical College on August 10, 11, 12, 20 17 and Dr Kafeel Khan indeed arranged jumbo oxygen cylinders to save dying kids.