Court relief to DU student charged with NSA to be challenged: Solicitor General

The CJI then referred to another student case – that of Chaudhary, who had participated in the Noida workers’ agitation and was detained under the NSA. He noted that the Allahabad High Court had quashed her detention and awarded compensation.

Intervening, Mehta said, “That we are challenging”. He did not specify who the petitioner would be.

Chaudhary, a law student and DU graduate from Durgapur in West Bengal, was initially picked up on April 11 in connection with the Noida workers’ protests. The Uttar Pradesh government invoked the NSA against her on May 13.

On September 2, a bench of Justices Atul Sreedharan

and Achal Sachdev of the Allahabad High Court quashed her detention. The HC was hearing the Habeas Corpus plea of Chaudhary.

A 15-page order, released on Monday, described the invocation of the NSA against her as “arbitrary and vague”.

The court described the decision by the Gautam Buddha Nagar district magistrate to invoke the NSA as “worthy of derision” and directed that its “displeasure” with the officials involved be recorded in their service records.

It also held District Magistrate Medha Roopam “guilty of violating her oath of allegiance, making this a fit case for the imposition of compensation to the petitioner”.

The court granted Rs 5 lakh as compensation to the petitioner, to be “recovered from the salary of the District Magistrate… who has passed this order of detention without application of mind and from all such other officers who may have been responsible, right down to the SHO of the Police Station, who had prepared the initial report warranting the detention of the petitioner under the provisions of the NSA”.

The court warned that unchecked abuse of power by Uttar Pradesh Police and officials risked reducing the state to an “Orwellian Dystopia”, which describes a society characterised by government control, mass surveillance and the manipulation of truth and language.