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 (NSA), with the amount ordered to be recovered from the salary of Gautam Budh Nagar district magistrate Medha Roopam.
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 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. 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 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. 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.
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. 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”.
