SC orders UP government to shift Kerala journalist Siddique Kappan to Delhi for COVID treatment
He has to be given treatment at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital or AIIMS or any other government hospital in Delhi.
FollowNew Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed the Uttar Pradesh government to shift arrested Kerala journalist Siddique Kappan to a hospital in Delhi after reports emerged that he was kept jailed to his bed in Mathura. Kappan had tested positive for Covid-19.
He has to be given treatment at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital or AIIMS or any other government hospital in Delhi.
After his recovery, he has to be sent back to Mathura jail, where he is under custody in a UAPA case on the allegation that he was trying to create communal unrest in UP after the Hathras gangrape-murder crime.
The SC said once Kappan is treated and certified to be fine, he would be taken back to Mathura jail. “It is open for Kappan thereafter to apply for a regular bail before a competent court,” the apex court said.
Solicitor general Tushar Mehta, appearing for the UP government, asked the Supreme Court that it has to direct a particular hospital, where all beds are full with Covid patients, to vacate a bed by asking a patient to go out to admit Kappan for treatment. The SC disposed of Mehta's plea.
“We are confined to health issue. It is in the interest of the state also that the accused gets better treatment,” the bench observed.
Kerala Union of Working Journalists (KUWJ) had alleged that Kappan has been chained to a cot in the hospital he was admitted to after falling in the bathroom and later testing positive for Covid-19. The Uttar Pradesh government, however, refused the claim.
On Tuesday, the SC had asked the state to file a medical report of Kappan while it was hearing the habeas corpus petition filed by KUWJ seeking its immediate direction to transfer the jailed journalist from Mathura hospital to AIIMS, New Delhi, due to his serious ill-health.
Kappan was arrested last year in October on his way to Hathras where a 19-year-old Dalit woman had died after being allegedly gang-raped. An FIR had been registered under various provisions of the IPC and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) against four people having alleged links with the Popular Front of India, or PFI, by the Uttar Pradesh Police.
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