Lucknow: On the directions of the Supreme Court, the jailed PFI activist and journalist Siddique Kappan was shifted to AIIMS Delhi for better treatment from a private hospital in Mathura amid tight security on Friday morning.
The Senior Jail Superintendent S.K. Maitreya said that after receiving the Supreme Court order, Kappan was shifted to AIIMS Delhi in an Ambulance amid tight security.
Kappan’s medical reports, submitted at the Supreme Court, claimed that he tested covid-19 positive on April 21. He sustained injuries after slipping in the jail bathroom. When he was admitted at a private hospital in Mathura, doctors attending on him disclosed that he was also suffering from high blood pressure, diabetes and heart ailments.
His lawyer Wills Mathews and the Kerala working Journalists’ Union had moved an application to the apex court seeking an order to shift him to any good hospital in Delhi for better treatment.
His wife Riahana Kappan had alleged that he was chained at the hospital and not being allowed to go to the washroom. She had also written a letter to the Supreme Court Chief Justice requesting his immediate release on medical grounds.
Kappan was arrested in October last year along with three others when they were on way to Hathras after gang-rape and murder of a 19-year-old dalit girl. He has been lodged in Mathura jail since then.
The UP STF has filed a chargesheet against Kappan and seven other PFI agents in Mathura Court slapping sedition and other charges under Sections 124 A, 153 A, 295 A of the IPC along with UAPA and IT Act.
