Allahabad High Court bills Noida DM's salary for an NSA detention it calls derision

The Allahabad High Court made public on 7 September its reasons for quashing the National Security Act detention of Delhi University student Akriti Chaudhary. Justices Atul Sreedharan and Achal Sachdev had set the detention aside on 2 September. The 15-page order awards her Rs 5 lakh and directs that the money be recovered from the salary of Gautam Buddha Nagar District Magistrate Medha Roopam and from other officers right down to the Station House Officer who prepared the first report.

Chaudhary, 24 or 25 in different court reports, is a history graduate from Delhi University. Outlets also describe her as an artist who teaches children in slums. She was held under the NSA after workers' protests in Noida in April 2026. Police filed multiple FIRs, eleven in one account. The detention lasted nearly five months. The bench held that the order and the grounds were empty of material and were passed without application of mind, and that the continued custody violated Article 21.

The judges wrote that the District Magistrate's conduct was worthy of derision. They said she desired to make an example of the petitioner and to deter others from speaking in public for workers. Where the police dossier held allegations and no credible backing, the magistrate was expected to read the record closely and then ask whether the ordinary criminal law was inadequate against a student with no previous criminal case. Videos cited by the police, the court said, showed people gathering to demand wages and working conditions, not incitement to violence.

The bench warned that despotic conduct by officials could reduce Uttar Pradesh to an Orwellian dystopia. It added that a civil servant's loyalty is to the Constitution, not to the political executive, and that Roopam was guilty of violating her oath of allegiance. Personal liability for compensation is the enforcement tool the court chose. Recovery from salary, including the SHO's, is meant to travel down the chain that produced the detention paper.

Roopam is the daughter of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, a fact several Indian outlets recorded when the order was released. The judgment itself turns on the record in front of the magistrate, not on family office. Naming the relationship is part of the public file. Treating it as the legal reason would misread the 15 pages.

NSA detention is preventive. It does not require a completed trial. That is why courts treat it as an exceptional power. The Allahabad bench has now said that a thin police note and a wish to set an example are not enough to lock up a student for months. The state can still appeal. Until it does, the order stands as a bill to be deducted from official pay and as a written limit on how the NSA may be used in Gautam Buddha Nagar.

The next administrative step is mechanical. The Rs 5 lakh has to be paid to Chaudhary and recovered from named salaries. If the state stays silent, the order will do that work without a further hearing. If it appeals, the Supreme Court will be asked whether a High Court may attach a magistrate's pay for a preventive detention that lacked material. That is the question the 7 September reasons have teed up.