Kolkata: What will you do to show gratitude to a city that extended its help to you when you were down in the dumps? Come back to show your solidarity with its people when they need you. Well, that’s precisely what Dr Kafeel Khan has been doing for the past few days in Kolkata.
“I am back in Kolkata to show my solidarity with the doctor’s movement demanding justice for Abhaya, which is now a people’s movement,” said Dr Khan.
Dr Kafeel on RG Kar Protests
Known for not mincing words, he said, “Democracy prevails in Bengal. The people of this state have done what none could do in the past. What happened in RG Kar Hospital, is a deplorable act. The fact that a doctor was not just raped but was tortured to death and then some people in the higher order of the medical college made attempts to cover it up is just shameful.” He then paused and added, “The protest that followed has shown Indians how to take onto the streets and demand for justice.”
When asked what he thought about the entire episode he said, “While the public need to be commended, we just can’t deny the fact that the chief minister Mamata Banerjee went to meet the angry doctors and agreed to meet their demands. No matter how angry you are, please understand that Bengal even today offers a space to voice your concern, to protest. Had this been in UP all the protesters would have been put behind bars and had the National Security Act (NSA) slapped on them.”
He mentioned that he had met the protesting doctors when he arrived in the city to extend his solidarity with their movement. “It’s almost two months since the crime was committed. The CBI needs to get down to the result and have the guilty punished,” added Dr Kafeel.
The Victim Doctor
The Gorakhpur doctor whose heart-wrenching story even found a place in Shah Rukh Khan’s hit movie Jawaan, was in Kolkata to launch the Bengali translation of his The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy: A Doctor’s Memoir of a Deadly Medical Crisis.
The much-acclaimed book, which Dr Khan says was a way to document his journey, has been published in 11 languages and took much time to translate into Bengali. “Bengal has given me much love and support. Bengali Bhadralok was the first to hit the streets demanding justice for Dr Kafeel Khan. So, when I was writing this book, I had a vision to have it simultaneously published in Bengali. But somehow, we didn’t have any publisher till now,” he said while showing a copy of the Bengali translation of the book.
The activist doctor, who is celebrating his birthday today while narrating his journey claimed that the vilification he received from the Uttar Pradesh government would have been the same had it been some Mishra or John. “The government needed a scapegoat to save itself from being dissolved. And that’s what they did – maligned my name to save the government,” said Dr Khan along the sidelines of his book launch organised at the Muslim Institute, Kolkata.
However, he pointed out that the journey from being hailed as a saviour to being labelled as a person with an ulterior agenda for the nation has been tough and that despite having his name cleared off all the allegations levelled at him, he is yet to get justice.
And what does justice mean to him? The doctor answered, “Assurance of providing free healthcare services to the poorest of the poor in the country.”
