The Supreme Court of India continued hearing a plea against the detention of Sonam Wangchuk on Thursday — with the activist’s lawyers contending that local authorities had ‘hidden’ vital information. The climate activist was jailed under the National Security Act in late September last year — two days after violent protests left four dead and 90 injured in Ladakh.
The speech given by Wangchuk was also played in court during the hearing. Sibal insisted that the tenor of the address was “not in any sense with intent to propagate violence but to quell it”. He also noted that this was opposite to the claims made in the detention order.
The central government has accused Wangchuk of inciting the violence and instigating the demands for statehood.
“They referred to four videos. But the video on the 24th is also available to them. Is it not the duty of the local authority to hand over the facts to the detaining authority so that all facts come out before the decision? That vital information, that vital video, wasn’t placed before the detaining authority…. that’s a very serious issue. Hiding that fact would indicate malice…in fact would be another ground for the order to be vitiated,” Kapil Sibal, representing Sonam Wangchuk, argued in court.
What does the plea say?
The plea was filed by Wangchuk’s is wife Gitanjali Angmo last year and initially heard by a bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and N V Anjaria. It claims that the detention is an illegal and arbitrary exercise that violates the fundamental rights of Wangchuk. The top court had sought responses from the Centre and the Ladakh administration in late October and deferred the matter nearly a month later as General Tushar Mehta sought time to respond.
Angmo argues that the detention order is founded upon “stale FIRs, vague imputations, and speculative assertions, lacks any live or proximate connection to the purported grounds of detention and is thus devoid of any legal or factual justification”. It insisted that the unfortunate Ladakh clashes could not be attributed to the actions or statements of Wangchuk in any manner.
“Such arbitrary exercise of preventive powers amounts to gross abuse of authority, striking at the core of constitutional liberties and due process, rendering the detention order liable to be vitiated by this court,” it alleged.
The plea added that it was ‘wholly preposterous’ to suddenly target Wangchuk after he had spent more than three decades being recognised at the state, national, and international levels for his contributions to grassroots education, innovation, and environmental conservation in Ladakh and across India.
What happened during the Ladakh protests?
Wangchuk had been at the forefront of the movement seeking statehood and extension of the Sixth Schedule to Ladakh. He was detained under the stringent National Security Act in late September 2025 for allegedly instigating the violent protests that left four people dead and scores of others, including security personnel, injured. He was later shifted to a jail in Jodhpur, Rajasthan.