From a Noida Wage Protest to NSA Detention: What the Allahabad High Court Found in Aakriti Chaudhary’s Case

The case began in an industrial dispute, but it ended up testing the limits of preventive detention. In April 2026, workers in Gautam Buddha Nagar came out in large numbers over wages and working conditions. The Allahabad High Court itself recorded the background: salaries of roughly ₹10,000–₹15,000, twelve-hour stretches of work, and years without an increase sufficient to meet rising living costs.

The State accused Aakriti Chaudhary, a Delhi University graduate and first-year law student, of participating in the conspiracy behind the violence that followed the agitation. On 13 May, the authorities invoked the National Security Act, 1980 against her. But when the High Court examined the material supporting that detention, the State’s theory began to unravel.

1. The High Court did not merely disagree with the State — it examined the record step by step

One of the most damaging features of the record concerned the notice that the police claimed to have issued under Section 130 BNSS before taking Aakriti into custody. The notice already carried the General Diary number that the police had generated in connection with her arrest. Justice Achal Sachdev pointed out the chronological impossibility; Justice Sreedharan agreed. The Bench concluded that the authorities prepared the notice after the arrest and described the procedure as a sham. The judgment records that no satisfactory answer was forthcoming from the State to the apparent fabrication.

The chronology of custody was equally important. The State maintained that the police took Aakriti into custody on 12 April. She said the police picked her up from Botanical Garden Metro Station at about 5:30 p.m. on 11 April. The Court tested both versions against the State’s own WhatsApp material. Messages to her went unanswered from 5:56 p.m. onward on 11 April, although she had been actively replying earlier that afternoon. The Bench held that this made her version of being in State custody from the evening of 11 April probable.

More fundamentally, the Court repeatedly asked the State to identify a WhatsApp message or video showing Aakriti inciting rioting, arson or destruction of property. None was shown. The judgment also identified the central chronological difficulty in the prosecution theory: the violence cited in the detention grounds erupted after she was already in custody.

The Bench therefore treated the NSA as what preventive detention law must always remain — an exceptional power. It held that the State cannot use the NSA simply to ensure continued incarceration where ordinary criminal law, including bail proceedings, already operates. The Court therefore quashed the detention order and grounds for violating Article 21 and for want of proper application of mind.

2. ₹5 lakh compensation — and personal recovery from the responsible officials

Aakriti had sought ₹50 lakh as compensation. The Court did not grant that amount because she remained in judicial custody in the ordinary criminal cases and would continue to require bail in those cases even after the NSA order was set aside.

Yet the Bench refused to let the unlawful preventive-detention exercise end without personal accountability. It awarded ₹5 lakh and directed the State to recover the amount from the salary of the District Magistrate, Gautam Buddha Nagar, who passed the detention order, and from the other officers responsible for preparing the dossier, “right down to the SHO”. It also directed the authorities to enter the Court’s displeasure in their service records.

3. Two legal tracks were running at the same time

Aakriti faced multiple ordinary criminal cases arising out of the Noida protest. An Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate rejected bail applications of several accused, including Aakriti, on 27–28 April. The bail litigation then continued before the Sessions Court, and by the time of the NSA ruling she had secured bail in some of the eleven FIRs while other applications remained pending.

Alongside those prosecutions ran a separate constitutional challenge to Aakriti’s preventive detention. On 2 September, the Allahabad High Court decided her habeas corpus petition against the NSA order. By quashing that detention, the Court removed the preventive-detention layer while the ordinary criminal cases and their bail proceedings continued on their own footing.

That distinction makes the judgment legally more interesting, not less. Ordinary criminal prosecution and preventive detention were running on parallel tracks. The High Court intervened on the second track: it examined whether the State could superimpose a national-security detention on material that did not objectively support any inference of incitement or threat to public order.

4. The wider Noida protest litigation had already reached the Supreme Court

The Aakriti case was not the only constitutional challenge generated by the April protest. In a separate proceeding, the families of Aditya Anand and Rupesh Roy raised allegations of custodial torture. Their families alleged that the police subjected the two men to custodial violence and denied them basic legal safeguards.

On 15 May, the Supreme Court directed Uttar Pradesh to produce both men before it. After the authorities physically produced them, the Bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan heard them and directed that they remain in judicial custody pending further consideration. The Supreme Court treated the allegations seriously enough to require the State to produce both men physically before it, bringing custodial safeguards into the centre of the wider Noida protest litigation.

In Aakriti’s own case, the Allahabad High Court focused on the legality of her detention, the chronology of custody, the supporting material relied upon by the authorities and the use of the NSA.

5. The author of the judgment: Justice Atul Sreedharan

A Division Bench of Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Achal Sachdev delivered the decision, and the judgment expressly records “Per: Hon’ble Atul Sreedharan, J.”

Justice Sreedharan joined the Madhya Pradesh High Court as an Additional Judge on 7 April 2016 and became a permanent judge in 2018. His judicial record has repeatedly brought him into cases where individual liberty meets executive power. During his tenure in the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, he quashed preventive-detention orders under the Public Safety Act and questioned national-security arguments unsupported by judicially cognisable material. After returning to Madhya Pradesh in 2025, a Division Bench headed by him directed registration of an FIR against then State Minister Vijay Shah over remarks concerning Colonel Sofiya Qureshi.

At Allahabad, his benches have dealt with restrictions on religious worship, custodial accountability, demolition action and other exercises of State power. A recurring theme runs through many of his reported decisions: extraordinary State power must remain answerable to constitutional standards. That judicial approach forms an important backdrop to the Aakriti Chaudhary decision.

6. Three moves in three years — and a transfer that changed his Collegium prospects

Justice Sreedharan’s transfer history is unusual. In 2023, he himself sought transfer out of the Madhya Pradesh High Court because his daughter was to begin legal practice there. The Collegium then transferred him to the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh. In March 2025, he returned to Madhya Pradesh.

Then came the controversial third move. In August 2025, the Supreme Court Collegium recommended his transfer to the Chhattisgarh High Court. On 14 October 2025, however, the Collegium formally recorded that, “on reconsideration sought by the Government”, it now recommended his transfer to the Allahabad High Court instead.

The institutional consequence was significant. Reporting by Indian Express, Bar & Bench and ThePrint noted that he would have been among the senior judges relevant to the High Court Collegium in Madhya Pradesh or Chhattisgarh. At Allahabad, his lower position in the seniority list materially reduced the likelihood of Collegium membership before his retirement in May 2028.

7. The farewell line that acquired a life of its own

At his November 2025 farewell from the Madhya Pradesh High Court, Justice Sreedharan spoke of impermanence and quoted poet Rahat Indori. The line he quoted began:

He followed the thought by likening those who temporarily occupy positions of authority to tenants rather than permanent owners. In the setting of a judicial transfer, the verse carried obvious resonance. Justice Sreedharan also said that transfers are an incident of judicial service and that he looked forward to serving at Allahabad.

8. The judgment is important — but it is not the last word

On 9 September 2026, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the Supreme Court that the State would challenge the Allahabad High Court ruling. The Uttar Pradesh government has also publicly stated that it intends to move the Supreme Court against both the quashing of the NSA detention and the compensation direction.

For now, the Allahabad High Court judgment remains operative. Uttar Pradesh has announced a challenge before the Supreme Court, but no higher court has yet stayed or reversed the ruling.

What makes this a Labour Law case as much as a Constitutional Law case?

The judgment does not decide minimum-wage fixation, an industrial dispute, or the interpretation of a standing order. Its labour-law significance lies elsewhere. A collective demand over pay and working hours triggered the dispute. The State responded first through ordinary criminal law and then, in Aakriti’s case, through preventive detention. That sequence forced the High Court to answer a deeper question: when workers and those supporting them assemble around employment conditions, how far can “public order” be used to convert collective labour dissent into a security problem?

The Court did not hold that violence enjoys constitutional protection. It expressly recognised the State’s responsibility to maintain order. Its point was narrower and more exacting: peaceful agitation cannot be presumed violent, the State cannot automatically attribute the misconduct of unidentified elements to an entire gathering, and the NSA cannot rest on speculation when the evidence fails to connect the detenue to incitement.

That is why Akriti Chaudhary deserves attention beyond the immediate controversy. It places wages, protest, preventive detention, Article 21, bureaucratic responsibility and judicial independence in the same factual frame — and then insists that each exercise of State power be justified by evidence rather than assumption.