For more than 200 days, a young, jailed Indian doctor faced charges under a national security law that allows the authorities to detain people if they feel they are a threat to national security. The allegations against 38-year-old paediatrician Dr Kafeel Khan arose from his speech at a student meeting last December criticising a controversial new citizenship law that is seen as discriminating against Muslims and which has roiled India. At the meeting in Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh state, Dr Khan had accused the ruling BJP government of indulging in sectarian politics and ignoring the "real issues". He had also spoken about the declining health of children, rising joblessness and the teetering economy. "We won't be afraid, no matter how much you scare us. Every time we rise, no matter how much you suppress us," he told some 600 cheering students. The police in Uttar Pradesh, now ruled by a controversial Hindu religious leader known for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, found Dr Khan's speech incendiary. Some 45 days after he made the speech, Dr Khan was arrested and sent to prison. "He tried to incite the religious sentiments of the Muslim students present in the meeting and to increase the hatred, enmity and disharmony towards the [Hindu] community," police told the court. On Tuesday, the high court in Allahabad disagreed with the police and threw out the case, saying Dr Khan "did not promote hatred or violence". Two judges said the doctor actually gave a call for "unity among citizens", and that authorities had read the speech selectively. "First he was a scapegoat. Now he has become an enemy of the state," his brother, Adeel Khan, a businessman, told me. Dr Khan has spent most of the past three years shuttling between prisons. He was jailed for seven months, awaiting trial on charges of culpable homicide and negligence after more than 70 children died in August 2017 in a public hospital in Gorakhpur, 800km (507 miles) east of Delhi, where he worked as a junior doctor. Eight other hospital workers, including the principal of the hospital, were also imprisoned on similar charges. Most of the deaths were the result of the hospital's oxygen supply being cut, allegedly because bills amounting to $100,000 (£75,000) had been unpaid, something that the government continues to deny.