After Supreme Court rebuke, magistrate suspended for notice to student over CJP protest

On Wednesday, the matter was raised before the bench, also comprising Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, prompting the CJI to ask: “How did the magistrate dare to issue a notice when we have already annulled” by September 1 order “and we have directed that on the already registered (FIRs), no action will be taken”.

On Thursday, senior advocate P V Dinesh, appearing for Tripathi, said subsequent to the court’s observations, the student too had filed a petition in the SC in the matter.

Urging the court’s intervention, the counsel said: “There should be a message to these people.”

The CJI said he had already taken a strong view of it when it was brought to the court’s notice on Wednesday.

Mehta then informed the court about the suspension and said, “Let’s not sensationalise it.”

Surprised over the issuance of the notice, the CJI had on Wednesday referred to the Supreme Court’s September 1 order quashing all cases against students who participated in the CJP-led protests against exam paper leaks.

“No penal action against any student: It was a very clear-cut order. The language is very plain. Even a layman can understand. The executive magistrate or district magistrate… cannot violate that order,” he said.

In his plea, Tripathi said he was a member of the UP committee of the SFI and that the notice issued by the “Executive Magistrate-Third, Greater Noida, Commissionerate Gautam Buddh Nagar… called upon” him “to show cause as to why he should not be bound down under Sections 126/135 of BNSS by executing a personal bond of Rs 5,00,000 with two sureties of like amount, for allegedly ‘instigating’ fellow students of his university to join a proposed dharna of the Cockroach Janta Party”.

He said he did not fall into the exception carved out for 2,873 individuals with antecedents of grave and heinous offences, against whom the Supreme Court had allowed police to file FIRs.

Tripathi said the notice, issued three days after the September 1 order and without disclosing any specific overt act, date, time, statement or instance of imminent violence, was “founded on vague, unsubstantiated and mala fide allegations of ‘spreading anti-government misleading talks’ and ‘instigating’ students to join a proposed, and admittedly peaceful, dharna”.

“Such action, being preventive in the harshest sense… and directed solely against a student for encouraging peaceful assembly and protected speech, offends Articles 14, 19(1)(a), 19(1)(b) and 21 of the Constitution of India, and further sits in direct conflict with the binding directions” in the September 1 order, he said.

The notice, Tripathi said, “fixed the very next day, i.e. 05.09.2026, for appearance, affording” him “barely a day’s notice to engage counsel, arrange sureties of an extraordinary quantum, and prepare a defence, in violation of the principles of natural justice and the requirement of a reasonable opportunity envisaged even under a preventive/security proceeding”.