Lucknow, Apr 7 (IANS): The Uttar Pradesh home department has said that it invoked the National Security Act against 534 persons in the past three years.
In an official statement on Tuesday, the government spokesman said that 106 NSA cases have been turned down by the advisory board while 50 others were quashed by the Allahabad High Court.
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.
Senior police officials said that most of the cases in which NSA was imposed were related to cow slaughter which led to tension and against heinous crimes committed on girl children and other crime cases.
It may be recalled that as per the reports appearing in a section of media, the Allahabad High Court has quashed a majority of the orders by the Uttar Pradesh government to impose the National Security Act (NSA).
The NSA was imposed by the state government in 120 cases between January 2018 and December 2020.
The Allahabad High Court ruled in 120 habeas corpus petitions challenging preventive detention under the NSA. In 94 detentions, it quashed orders of district magistrates in as many as 32 districts and ordered the release of the detainees.
A hearing was held in the Allahabad High Court on the 120 cases and apart from the 94 cases, the court also quashed 32 cases given by the district magistrate and ordered the release of the detainees.
The court considered the state government's cases as 'misuse of the NSA law'.
The court said that important information in the police FIRs were a 'cut and paste' job.
On the detention orders given by the district magistrates, the court said they seem to be 'non-application of mind'.
The court also slammed the denial of legal procedure to the accused and using the law repeatedly to cancel the bail and dealt a setback to the Uttar Pradesh government by staying the orders.