The Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that it will challenge the Allahabad high court order directing payment of ₹5 lakh compensation to 24-year-old law student Akriti Chaudhary for her illegal preventive detention under the National Security Act, with the amount ordered to be recovered from the salary of Gautam Budh Nagar district magistrate Medha Roopam.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta made the submission before a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant while clarifying that the preventive notice issued in a separate case against a 20-year-old law student, Akshat Tripathi, was issued by an executive magistrate and not the district magistrate.
A day earlier, police said that the notice was cancelled after an inquiry found the information in the report to be “false”. To be sure, the information department of Gautam Budh Nagar district on Wednesday said that the executive magistrate mentioned in the notice was a police officer.
Deep Dive
What was the basis for the Allahabad High Court's compensation order to Akriti Chaudhary?
Why is the Uttar Pradesh government challenging the Allahabad High Court's ruling on Chaudhary's compensation?
How did the Supreme Court respond to the issuance of a preventive notice to Akshat Tripathi?
The clarification came during the hearing of a matter in which the Supreme Court had on Wednesday morning expressed strong disapproval over the issuance of the notice to Tripathi despite its categorical September 1 order protecting students who participated in protests led by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar.
The CJI, referring to the requirement that Tripathi was perhaps required to appear before the district magistrate, said the court would seek an explanation from the concerned magistrate -- “executive or district or both”, over the action against the student.
{{/usCountry}}The CJI, referring to the requirement that Tripathi was perhaps required to appear before the district magistrate, said the court would seek an explanation from the concerned magistrate -- “executive or district or both”, over the action against the student.
{{/usCountry}}At one point, the CJI also referred to the recent Allahabad high court judgment concerning Chaudhary, whose preventive detention under the NSA was quashed by the high court on September 2.
The Solicitor General then informed the bench that the Uttar Pradesh government was challenging the high court’s order. People aware of the development said Roopam was also likely to challenge the order separately, particularly the direction imposing a monetary liability on her.
The Allahabad high court, in its detailed judgment made public on Monday, had ordered that ₹5 lakh be paid as compensation to Chaudhary, with the amount recovered from the salary of the Gautam Budh Nagar DM. A bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdeva had also directed that its displeasure with Roopam and the police be recorded in their service records.
The high court had come down heavily on the administration’s handling of the case, describing the DM’s conduct as “worthy of derision” and saying she appeared to have sought to “set an example” out of Chaudhary, a student activist, to deter others from protesting.
It found that a notice issued to Chaudhary under Section 130 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), requiring her to furnish a bond for good behaviour, appeared to have been prepared after she had already been taken into custody.
The court relied on the general diary number mentioned in the notice to conclude that the document was prepared retrospectively. It described the procedure as “ex post facto the arrest and nothing more than a sham” and said no satisfactory explanation had been offered by the State for what it termed the “visible fabrication in the record”.
The bench also examined WhatsApp chats, videos, case diary entries and other material relied upon by the authorities and found no evidence showing that Chaudhary had incited people to riot, commit arson or damage public or private property.
It held that preventive detention under the NSA, being an exceptional power directly affecting the right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, could not be sustained on the basis of “surmises, biases, conjectures and opinions”.
The high court further criticised the use of administrative machinery against peaceful protesters, saying the State should instead equip the police to manage large gatherings and use videography to ensure accountability when violence occurs.
In an unusually sharp observation, the high court said IAS and IPS officers must remember that their loyalty was to the Constitution and not the political executive, and warned that those who forgot this risked reducing Uttar Pradesh to “an Orwellian Dystopia”.
The Supreme Court’s reference to the judgment came against the backdrop of its own concern over the Gautam Budh Nagar administration’s action against Tripathi, a second-year student of Gautam Buddha University.
The executive magistrate had on September 4 issued Tripathi a notice alleging that he was spreading “anti-government propaganda” and encouraging fellow students to join the CJP protests at Jantar Mantar. The notice required him to show cause why he should not furnish a personal bond of ₹5 lakh and two sureties of an equal amount to maintain peace for six months.
The notice was withdrawn the following day after a police inquiry found that the information on which it was based was false. It also emerged that Tripathi had left the university campus for his semester break and was in Prayagraj when the alleged activity was said to have taken place.
The Supreme Court had on September 1 invoked its extraordinary powers under Article 142 to bring to an end criminal proceedings arising from the July CJP protests. It directed that FIRs registered between July 20 and 25 in connection with the demonstrations be treated as closed and ordered that no fresh FIRs be registered over the same incidents.
The bench had also made clear that mere participation in the protests could not be treated as an offence under penal laws, while leaving open for separate consideration the cases of 2,837 people whom Delhi Police claimed had criminal antecedents and were prima facie present at the protest site.