Gitanjali J Angmo, activist Sonam Wangchuk’s wife, has filed a petition before the Supreme Court challenging his detention under the National Security Act.

Angmo filed the habeas corpus petition seeking Wangchuk’s immediate release on Thursday. A habeas corpus is a petition through which a court can order the authorities to produce a person before it to verify if they have been lawfully detained.

The Supreme Court is currently on Dussehra vacation and will reopen on Monday.

Wangchuk was arrested in Leh on September 26, two days after four persons were killed in police firing during protests seeking statehood for Ladakh. He was later taken to a jail in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur.

The police firing and violence broke out on September 24 during protests demanding statehood for Ladakh and its inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. Demonstrators clashed with and threw stones at the police, and set fire to the Bharatiya Janata Party office and a police vehicle.

The Union government has claimed that the violence was incited by Wangchuk’s “provocative statements”.

Angmo, the founder and chief executive officer of Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh, in a social media post on Friday said she has had no contact with her husband since his arrest a week ago.

“Still I have no information about Sonam Wangchuk’s health, the condition he is in nor the grounds of detention,” Angmo said.

On Wednesday, she had also written to President Droupadi Murmu seeking Wangchuk’s “unconditional release”.

“A full-scale witch hunt has been unleashed for the past one month in particular, and for the past four years covertly, to kill the spirit of my husband and all the causes he stands for and espouses,” Angmo wrote, while describing Wangchuk as a “peaceful Gandhian protester with an impeccable track record of service to the nation”.

She also claimed that she has been put under surveillance by the Central Reserve Police Force and that two members of her institute were taken into police custody in the last three days, “presumably without any authority of law”.

Demand for constitutional safeguards

On August 5, 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government abrogated the special status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution and bifurcated the state into the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

The lack of a legislature in Ladakh has led to increasing insecurities among the residents of the Union Territory about their land, nature, resources and livelihoods and stoked fears that the region’s cultural identity and fragile ecosystem may be in jeopardy.

In this backdrop, civil society groups have been demanding that Ladakh be included in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which would allow for the creation of autonomous development councils to govern land, public health and agriculture.

Following Wangchuk’s detention, key regional groups Apex Body Leh and Kargil Democratic Alliance withdrew from ongoing talks with the government, stating that “talks cannot be held at gunpoint”.

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