New Delhi: Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk’s arrest reflects the state of democracy in the country where power is used to “illegally detain” people, his wife Gitanjali Angmo said, asserting that he should already be out of prison due to “procedural lapses” by authorities.
In an interview with PTI, Angmo alleged that the Solicitor General has been seeking “dates after dates” as they have realised that there is “no merit in the case”.
Angmo, who co-founded the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh, with Wangchuk, said that it’s an “open and shut case”.
Wangchuk, a Magsaysay Award-winning climate activist and educator, was detained under the stringent National Security Act (NSA) on September 26, two days after protests demanding statehood and Sixth Schedule status for Ladakh left four people dead and 90 injured in the Union territory, and was taken to Jodhpur jail.
“…it’s not just about Sonam Wangchuk as an individual, but about the state of democracy in this country, about the use of power for illegal detention of people who have been working for this country. If it can happen to Sonam, it can happen to anybody else,” she said.
Angmo said she was a “bit disappointed” that Wangchuk’s detention has not faced stronger pushback.
“We cannot afford to be silent. I think the voice needs to be more collected and louder,” she said.
Angmo, also an educator, has filed a habeas corpus petition challenging Wangchuk’s detention and seeking his immediate release.
“It has been quite an uphill task, getting the detention order and meeting Sonam needed a habeas corpus to be filed in the Supreme Court and even after that was filed, to get his handwritten notes was a challenge,” Angmo told PTI.
The handwritten notes prepared by Wangchuk regarding his detention are part of legal documentation submitted to the Supreme Court.
Angmo said as per the NSA, authorities should provide all documents, including the ones that establish the grounds of detention, to the detainee within “five or maximum 10 days”.
“But these four videos were given to him on the 28th day, on October 23. This is a very big procedural lapse, based on which the detention order should be made void ab initio and quashed,” she said.
“In a way, it is an open and shut case just on this alone because it violates Section 8 of the National Security Act. Corollary to this is that because he did not get these videos, he was denied a chance to make an effective representation — Section 11 of the NSA — in front of the advisory board,” she said.
Angmo said the grounds of detention used against Wangchuk “are stale” and some of them “rely on videos that are one and a half years old or one year old”.
She said out of the five FIRs that have been relied upon, three don’t name him. Among the two that name him, one dates back to August 2025, to which no notice was given or inquiry made, she said.
Angmo added that the district magistrate’s detention order is a “copy-paste” of the proposal given by the Superintendent of Police.
“…the district magistrate should apply his mind and not just cut copy-paste whatever is given to him,” she said. “There are several judgments to this effect that if application of mind has not happened, then that also makes the detention infructuous.”
When asked about Wangchuk’s detention being raised in the recent Parliament session, she said she was thankful to those who raised it, including Ladakh MP Mohmad Haneefa whose “mic was muted” when he brought it up.
“But I am also a bit disappointed that it hasn’t been raised to the extent that it should have been,” she added.
The educator stressed that they are not trying to make the case political but rued the “delays”.
“The Solicitor General of India, who represents the Union (government), always keeps taking dates after dates, employing delay tactics, because I think they have realised that there is no merit in the case,” she said.
However, she added, “I am told that compared to other cases, we still are getting dates which are quick enough”.
Angmo also said that over the last three and a half months, she observed that society is becoming more and more “polarised”.
“You know, we are either belonging to this party or that, or this sect or that. My appeal to everybody would be to become a true citizen of independent India, you know, with a mind and wisdom of our own. To be above even party ideologies and to think in the larger interest of the nation,” she said.
“Let us not lose our wisdom and discernment and be swayed by narratives and party ideologies,” she stressed.
Asked about their institutes, HIAL and SECMOL (Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh), she said, “I would like to really applaud our second line of leadership, who have really risen to the occasion and have not allowed any disruption to happen”.
She added, however, that the case has led to delays in the new projects they were planning.
“The new projects that we were envisaging, which I was personally leading, like the teacher training fellowship and the kindergarten K-12 school that we were planning to launch this year, have been delayed,” Angmo said.
She also said many who were funding their institutions have said “they are being pressured” not to stop funding.
“The silver lining is that a lot of people earlier used to tell me that people don’t know about HIAL as much. But now more and more people know about the school. I’m sure once we tide this over, there will again be a lot of support and open support,” she added.–(PTI)
