UP Govt invoked NSA against 534 persons in 3 years

Lucknow: In an official statement released on Tuesday, the Uttar Pradesh home department has said that it invoked the National Security Act against 534 persons in the past three years.

"106 NSA cases have been turned down by the advisory board while 50 others were quashed by the Allahabad High Court", the government spokesman said, as reported by IANS.

The district administration and police invoked NSA against 184 persons in 2018, while in 2019, 128 persons were booked under the NSA and the figure went up to 222 in 2020.

The advisory board turned down NSA in as many as 38 cases in 2018, 21 in 2019 and 47 in 2020.

Similarly, the Allahabad High Court quashed NSA against 23 persons in 2018, 24 in 2019 and three in 2020.

Most of the cases in which the NSA was imposed were related to cow slaughter, against heinous crimes committed on girl children and other criminal cases, said senior police officials.

As per the reports appearing in a section of media, the Allahabad High Court had previously quashed a majority of the orders by the Yogi Adityanath government to impose the National Security Act (NSA).

In 120 habeas corpus petitions challenging preventive detention under the NSA between January 2018 and December 2020, 94 detentions orders of district magistrates in as many as 32 districts were quashed and the detainees were released by the Allahabad court.

The court considered the state government's cases as 'misuse of the NSA law' and commented that important information in the police FIRs was a 'cut and paste job.

Also, on the detention orders given by the district magistrates, the court criticised that they seem to be 'non-application of mind'.