New Delhi: The Supreme Court has stayed the Allahabad High Court order quashing the National Security Act (NSA) charge against Delhi University student Akriti Chaudhary and was critical of Gautam Buddha Nagar District Magistrate, IAS officer Medha Roopam, for signing off on Chaudhary’s preventive detention.
Chaudhary is facing prosecution for allegedly instigating violence that followed a workers’ wage hike protest in Noida on 13 April.
During the hearing Wednesday, the Uttar Pradesh government’s counsel argued that the Allahabad High Court had every right to set aside an order, but cannot single out and castigate a civil servant. Akriti Choudhary’s counsel, on the other hand, challenged the grounds for her detention, saying she was in police custody before the violence took place.
“How can you isolate her (District Magistrate) and slap a Rs 5 lakh fine on her,” said the Supreme Court, initially reserving the case for interim orders and asking Chaudhary’s lawyer to file written submissions to appeals by the state and Medha Roopam. Chaudhary’s lawyer accepted that the District Magistrate was not solely responsible, but read out her order which he said ignored vital facts while terming his client’s ideology as “despicable”.
The IAS officer’s case before the top court raises an important legal question: Can an officer, who exercised statutory power, be held personally accountable for a preventive detention order?
During the hearing, the Uttar Pradesh government assailed the Allahabad High Court’s 2 September order, which quashed the NSA detention order against Chaudhary and directed that she be released, unless she was required in another case. In the same order, the High Court held IAS officer Medha Roopam accountable for the unlawful detention and ordered that Rs 5 lakh be deducted from her salary and paid as compensation to Chaudhary.
Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the state, argued Wednesday that the High Court judgment was misdirected since it did not carry out an independent examination of the detention order. Besides, he argued that the procedure to issue a preventive detention order is layered and the District Magistrate is merely one of the officers part of it.
Explaining this process to the bench comprising Justices S.C. Sharma and N.K. Singh, he said that an advisory body headed by a former High Court judge approved the detention with a reasoned order. “Entire establishment did not go by one person. A High Court judge (heading the advisory board) affirmed it and then it was cleared by the state, then the Centre. Why is this young lady officer being accused of derision? Why impose a fine on her when she was just one link in the chain? Nobody has blamed the advisory committee, comprising a former High Court judge,” argued the senior advocate.
In its judgment, while reprimanding Roopam, the High Court had described her conduct as “worthy of derision” for ordering what it termed arbitrary preventive detention.
Rohatgi informed the bench about the role of the advisory board, which is usually headed by a former High Court judge, and on occasion might even comprise only judges as its members. The top court and several other High Courts have quashed preventive detention orders in the past, but never damned the advisory committee, he said.
The request to invoke preventive detention is made by the police and examined at four different levels within the police structure before it reaches the District Magistrate, he said. The District Magistrate then sends it to the Governor, who forwards it to the advisory board, which passes a speaking order to either approve or reject the proposal to detain someone. Once the board gives its opinion, the file goes back to the Governor, who finalises the order and sends it to the Centre, which can either affirm or reject it.
In the present case, the authority at every step had given its clearance to detain Akriti Chaudhary, Rohatgi told the bench. Her representation against it was declined too, he said.
The senior counsel said the High Court has every right to set aside an order, but it cannot pick an officer and castigate her. “This is not a case of personal vendetta or political,” he contended, while also raising a challenge to the High Court order.
He argued that there was application of mind on District Magistrate Medha Roopam’s part with regard to the detention order, which the High Court ignored, particularly the violence that caused injury to several policemen and damage to public infrastructure.
Instead of analysing the detention order and considering the police response filed before it, the High Court analysed the correctness of Chaudhary’s arrest, which was not the issue before it, Rohatgi said. The scope of the proceedings before the Allahabad High Court was to determine whether the authorities had followed the procedural safeguard before invoking the NSA, which is missing in the present case, he contended.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for Roopam, since she too has challenged the High Court order, argued that the IAS officer had framed her subjective satisfaction on objective police inputs. Safeguards were scrupulously followed and instead of examining this aspect, the High Court went into the legality of the arrest, virtually granted bail to Chaudhary and quashed the NSA, said Mehta. The court was told that Chaudhary remains in jail because she was named in 10 more FIRs, and is yet to secure bail in these cases.
Also Read: DM invoked, court disposed: Why Allahabad HC keeps quashing UP cases under NSA & Goondas Act
‘No evidence, 99% flamboyant narrative’
Akriti Chaudhary’s lawyer, senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, took the judges through the Allahabad High Court judgement, which did an extensive study of the conditions that formed the basis for NSA detention. The Supreme Court remarked that preventive detention can be based on intelligence inputs as well.
The bench of Justices Sharma and Singh said that the High Court’s remit is only to check whether procedural safeguards were complied with, and not to venture into the merits of evidence gathered against the detainee. However, Gonsalves rebutted this suggestion and said if facts show that detention is based on sketchy evidence, then the same cannot escape judicial scrutiny even if there is compliance of procedural safeguards.
He said the different cases pending against Chaudhary were related to only one incident reported on 13 April.
Gonsalves submitted that the first condition for detention, that Chaudhary instigated the mob, was not true since she was in police custody before the violence took place.
The High Court, he argued, repeatedly asked the state to produce the inflammatory speech that Chaudhary gave to instigate the mob and contribute to public disorder.
However, when the police could not do it, Chaudhary placed a copy of her speech before the court. “Judge kept asking, ‘give me a gram of material’. Not one microgram of evidence but 99 percent flamboyant narrative was given,” he said. Adding, “If I (Choudhary) have not contributed at all (to the violence), what are you doing by putting me in prison.”
To the bench’s query on the grounds for setting aside the detention order, Gonsalves said it was because Choudhary was not there in the crowd.
He, however, agreed when the bench said the DM acted upon notes submitted to her by the police and the advisory committee had looked into it.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: DM invoked, court disposed: Why Allahabad HC keeps quashing UP cases under NSA & Goondas Act