PRAYAGRAJ, Oct. 9 -- The Allahabad high court on Thursday reserved judgment on a habeas corpus petition filed by journalist Satyam Verma, challenging his preventive detention under the National Security Act, 1980 (NSA), over his alleged role in the April 2026 workers' protest in Noida. Advocate Abhishek Dwivedi, counsel for Verma, said the court reserved the verdict after hearing the parties concerned but refused to comment on the court room proceedings and said that he would be in a position to say anything only once the judgment is made public. The bench comprising Justice Atul Sreedharan and Justice Achal Sachdev reserved the verdict after hearing the parties for two days on Wednesday and Thursday (October 7 and 8). Verma has challenged the detention order dated May 12, 2026, passed by the Gautam Buddh Nagar district magistrate, under Section 3(2) read with Section 3(3) of the National Security Act. The petition seeks quashing of the detention order and consequential orders, as well as a direction for Verma's immediate release and compensation for his alleged illegal detention. The primary ground raised in the habeas plea is that the detention order was allegedly based on a factually impossible premise that Verma was involved in the violence in Noida on April 13, 2026. The petition claims that, according to the CCTV footage and Call Detail Records (CDRs), Verma was approximately 500 kilometres away in Lucknow, where he was allegedly detained by the Hasanganj Police at 2.14 pm on the same day. The plea described this as an ironclad alibi and argued that an NSA detention order based on physically impossible and demonstrably false premises was liable to be quashed. It further alleged that the investigating officer deliberately suppressed the CDRs and CCTV footage from Hasanganj police station from the detaining authority, thereby vitiating the latter's subjective satisfaction. The petition also contends that Verma was not named in any of the 11 FIRs relied upon by the State for the detention. According to the plea, the detention order rests upon statements allegedly made by a co-accused/witness named Mangal while in police custody. The counsel for the petitioner that the material relied upon by the authorities, even taken at its highest, disclosed a localised labour dispute over minimum wages, which, according to Verma, falls within the domain of "law and order" and does not constitute a threat to public order. The plea alleges that the NSA was consequently used to crush a spontaneous and lawful labour demand....