UP infant deaths: Gorakhpur doctor’s past haunts him

Lucknow: Two days after he was arrested in connection with the Gorakhpur deaths, the past of Dr Kafeel Khan, the nodal officer in the Encephalitis ward in the BRD Medical College, is returning to haunt him.

The police is now trying to reopen previous cases against Dr Khan after one of the aggrieved parties told the cops that the cases against him had been shut at the behest of a former Samajwadi Party minister.

“From reports, we gather that the doctor is a habitual offender who has violated law on occasions more than one. As investigations pick up, we will be revisiting cases against him to see whether he was given a clean chit under political pressures,” said a senior police official.

The first case against Dr Kafeel Khan dates back to 2009 when he was found to be guilty of impersonation.

As per the Delhi police, the principal of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Janakpuri, had complained that during the National Board of Examinations held to test Indian nationals with foreign medical qualifications, Mr Kafeel Ahmed Khan, then a medical student at Manipal University, was found to be impersonating Dr Vijay Kumar.

The second case in which Dr Khan was later indicted and then cleared was of rape, registered at the Mahila police station, Gorakhpur. A woman complained that she was raped by Dr Kafeel and his brother on the pretext of giving a job in 2015. However, the police closed the case after reportedly finding that the allegations were not true.

Police sources said they also found that the woman used to work for a business rival of Khan’s brother.

Shalini Singh, SHO, Mahila police station, said the investigation was conducted by the police and confirmed that a final report had been filed in the case in 2015 itself. Sources, however, claim that the complainant was forced to withdraw the complaint under pressure from top police officials.

Dr. Kafeel Khan was also accused of submitting a false affidavit to the chief medical officer though it is not yet clear what the affidavit was for. The matter was later ‘buried’ in the Samajwadi regime. Dr. Khan has now been booked for doing private practice despite being a government doctor. He runs a nine-bed hospital called ‘Medi-Spring’ and the sign board says that “Doctor Saheb will attend to patients from 9 am to 9 pm.”

He also owns a medical shop near the hospital and both have been shut after the controversy over the death of 30 children began last month. According to reports, Dr. Kafeel’s relative who is a journalist in Gorakhpur had planted stories about the doctor going out of his way to prevent deaths and borrowing and buying oxygen cylinders when the oxygen supply was disrupted. Dr. Khan had apparently sourced the first three cylinders from his own hospital ‘Medispring Hospital and Research Centre’.