NEW DELHI: The wife of detained climate activist
Sonam Wangchuk told Supreme Court on Wednesday that he was in no way connected with the violence that erupted in Ladakh on September 24 as he was only staging a non-violent and peaceful protest through a hunger strike and that there had been "grave and incurable procedural lapses" in his detention following the incident.
In a detailed petition filed in the court, Gitanjali Angmo pointed out various flaws in the action taken against her husband and submitted that four videos which were primarily relied upon by the detaining authority were provided to him after 23 days.
She told the court that the detention order was passed on the basis of "stale" FIRs, with three of the five FIRs being filed a year back. She said a fourth FIR was filed in Aug, but it was not connected with the incident, and the fifth FIR filed over the September 24 incident "does not contain any allegation of violence, provocation or instigation against Wangchuk". "In fact, the FIR clearly states that certain miscreants instigated people who joined the hunger strike," she said.
"It is submitted that the detention order suffers from gross illegality and arbitrariness, as it relies upon stale, irrelevant, and extraneous FIRs. Out of the five FIRs relied upon, three pertain to the year 2024, bearing no proximate, live or rational nexus to his detention in September 2025. Moreover, four out of the five FIRs, of which three are registered against 'unknown persons', do not name him. There is thus no clear, live, proximate or intelligible connection between FIRs & his preventive detention under the NSA," the petition said.
The detention order is premised on the fear of public panic which may be caused if Wangchuk is not detained, with the respondents not furnishing any evidence linking the statements made by him to any incident of public unrest or media outrage.
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