Campus Front of India student leader Atikur Rahman, who was arrested in October 2020 along with Kerala journalist Siddiqui Kappan and charged under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, has been admitted to a local hospital in Lucknow after his health deteriorated in prison.
Rahman, 28, a resident of village Nangla Riawali Thana Ratanpuri Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, was a regular visitor to AIIMS since 2007 when he was a teenager, diagnosed with a chronic heart ailment. Rahman is suffering from a heart condition called aortic regurgitation, which occurs when the aortic valve of the heart does not close tightly. Its most serious complication would be heart failure.
Rahman’s brother Mateen told The Cognate that his condition worsened in Lucknow jail on Tuesday because he did not receive the right treatment. “Eight months ago, my younger brother underwent open heart surgery. He did not receive the right treatment in jail which is why today he is hanging between life and death. Doctors at Lucknow’s King George’s Medical University (KGMU) said that due to a lack of treatment, his condition has deteriorated. We demand the government to immediately send him to AIIMS for treatment.”
In November 2021, Rahman was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for open heart surgery. He was admitted there for almost three months.
The student leader’s right arm and right leg are not working, according to his lawyer Saifan Sheikh.
“Atik is sick for a long time. The doctors at AIIMS had advised him to consult them back within six months. He kept sending letters to the jail authorities to send him to AIIMS as six months had already passed. He urged that he wants to do a check-up. But the jail superintendent did not accept his request asking him to consult the jail doctor, who referred him to KGMU. We even filed an application in court but it gave an order to do the needful as per the jail manual. It’s difficult and challenging because it is necessary to show Atik in AIIMS to check the position of the wall in his heart immediately,” Sheikh told The Cognate.
His counsel said that he is going to file an application requesting to refer him there. “Atik should be immediately admitted there.”
Atikur Rahman, who is a research scholar in library science at Chaudhary Charan Singh University in Meerut was arrested along with Kappan, Masood Ahmed, a master’s student at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia, and taxi driver Mohammad Alam, on their way to express solidarity with the family of a young Dalit woman in Hathras, who died after she was raped and murdered by four upper caste men.
The Uttar Pradesh police have booked them under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the draconian UAPA, which allow detention for a year without bail.
Meanwhile, on August 23, taxi driver Mohammad Alam was granted bail by the Allahabad High Court, almost 23 months after his arrest.
Atik’s father-in-law Sakhawat Chhatari told his condition is still critical and hasn’t improved much. “After several applications, the Court referred him to KGMU hospital for his treatment. But there are no good facilities in this hospital for his treatment which is why his condition started to deteriorate more. He is languishing between life and death. Don’t know what will happen now. We are very heartbroken.”
At present, the student activist’s family has filed an application in a special Court in Lucknow, seeking to transfer him to AIIMS, Delhi. Sakhawat said, “The decision may come or may not come by 8 September. And we are scared if his condition gets worse between this period.”
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Rabia Shireen is a Staff Reporter at The Cognate.
