Ladakh violence: Sonam Wangchuk to remain in Jodhpur Jail; release plea hearing deferred to Nov 24

Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk will continue to remain in Jodhpur Jail for now as the Supreme Court on Wednesday deferred to November 24 the hearing on his wife Gitanjali J Angmo’s amended petition seeking his immediate release from detention under the National Security Act (NSA), 1980.

A Bench of Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice NV Anjaria – which allowed Angmo's plea to amend the petition after it was mentioned by senior counsel Kapil Sibal -- asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta – representing the Centre and the Union Territory of Ladakh -- to respond to Angmo’s amended petition in 10 days.

Giving one week to file her rejoinder, if any, the Bench posted the matter for further hearing November 24.

The activist was detained on September 26 under Section 3(2) of the NSA, two days after protests demanding Ladakh’s statehood and the Sixth Schedule status turned violent, leaving four persons dead and nearly 100 injured.

Angmo has challenged Wangchuk’s detention, terming it “illegal, arbitrary and unconstitutional”, saying the detention order violated her husband’s fundamental rights guaranteed under Articles 14 (right to equality), 19 (right to various freedoms), 21 (right to life and liberty) and 22 (Protection against arrest and detention in certain cases) of the Constitution.

The top court had on October 15 deferred the hearing on Angmo’s petition seeking her husband’s immediate release from detention under the NSA to October 29 after she sought time to amend her petition to add certain additional grounds and reliefs.

Now, in her amended petition she has raised additional grounds challenging Wangchuk’s detention under the NSA, contending that the detention order and grounds of detention were ex-facie unsustainable in law as they were premised on irrelevant grounds, stale FIRs, extraneous material, self-serving statements, and suppression of information.

The grounds of detention relied upon five FIRs, out of which three dated back to more than one year and the fifth FIR lodged a day before his detention, only named some "unknown miscreants" who attacked the police personnel, she submitted.

She submitted that “the Detention Order suffers from gross illegality and arbitrariness, as it relies upon stale, irrelevant, and extraneous FIRs. As is evident from the preceding paragraphs, out of the five FIRs relied upon, three pertain to the year 2024, bearing no proximate, live, or rational nexus to the detention of Mr. Wangchuk in September 2025.

“Moreover, four out of five of the FIRs, out of which three are registered against “unknown persons”, do not name Mr. Sonam Wangchuk. There is thus no clear, live, proximate, or intelligible connection between the FIRs and the preventive detention of Mr. Sonam Wangchuk under the NSA, 1980,” Angmo submitted in her amended petition.

She asserted that her husband never made any provocative speech ahead of the violence which broke out on September 24 and had merely undertaken a peaceful hunger strike in support of Ladakh's demand for statehood.

She alleged that the grounds of detention selectively mentioned Wangchuk's reference to Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in his speeches.

“The whole speech shows that he was merely referring to remarks made by earlier speakers who had referred to change of governments in those countries. He had also offered a clarification, stating: ‘Unlike these places, in Ladakh it won't be through violence, stones, arrows etc. We can have a peaceful revolution (this phrase can be heard in English), where we starve ourselves to bring change but not bother anyone else and make Ladakh an example for other countries also,” she submitted.

"It is submitted that it is incorrect to state that Mr. Sonam Wangchuk instigated the ABL (Apex Body Leh) to organise any protest. The question of “instigation” does not arise at all, as both the ABL and KDA (Kargil Democratic Alliance) leadership had, on multiple occasions, publicly announced, even prior to Mr. Wangchuk's joining and at a time when he held no decision-making position whatsoever, that they would intensify their agitation if the MHA did not resume talks after the meeting held on 27.05.2025. In fact, the ABL and KDA had already organised a joint three-day hunger strike from 10 -12 August 2025 in Kargil district demanding that talks with the Central Government be resumed,” Angmo submitted.