A Bench comprising Justices Aravind Kumar and Prasanna Varale heard the matter for the entire second half of the day. Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal appeared for the petitioner.
The Supreme Court on Thursday heard the plea filed against the detention of jailed climate activist Sonam Wangchuk under the National Security Act (NSA). Wangchuk’s Angmo’s plea was represented by senior advocate Kapil Sibal before the top court, who argued that the climate activist was not provided with “complete grounds” of detention and never afforded a “proper opportunity” to make a representation to the authority concerned against detention. The matter is now listed on January 12.
Sonam Wangchuk’s speech was illegally suppressed, argues wife in SC
A Bench comprising Justices Aravind Kumar and Prasanna Varale heard the matter for the entire second half of the day. Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal appeared for the petitioner. He submitted that the climate activist’s speech appealing for peace was illegally suppressed by the detaining authority. “Wangchuk could be clearly heard stating in English that the movement would not be through violence, stones or arrows, but through peaceful means. It can even be cleanly seen and heard in the video,” the counsel submitted.
During the court hearing, the petitioner argued that Wangchuk’s speech did not threaten state security, asserting that the September 26, 2025, detention order was procedurally flawed because the four primary videos used as evidence from earlier that month were never provided to the detainee. Sibal contended that the detaining authority acted with “malice” by selectively relying on videos to allege the propagation of violence while intentionally withholding footage of Wangchuk explicitly speaking against violence. He further submitted that the grounds of detention were supplied to Wangchuk after a flagrant delay of 28 days, in clear violation of the statutory timeline. He said that on September 29, Wangchuk was provided only with the detention order and incomplete grounds, as the four videos forming the most proximate basis of the detention were not supplied on that date.
Ladakh violence: Sonam Wangchuk’s release plea
Wangchuk’s wife, Gitanjali Angmo, had filed the habeas corpus plea seeking release of her husband on the basis that no grounds of detention were supplied by the detaining authorities. Wangchuk was detained on September 26 and shifted to Jodhpur Central Jail in Rajasthan for allegedly inciting a violent protest in Ladakh. He was booked under the NSA after the violence in Leh, in which four people were killed and 80 others were injured. The protesters have been demanding statehood for Ladakh and inclusion of the region in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.The plea had stated that Wangchuk’s detention was not genuinely linked to national security or public order but intended to silence a respected environmentalist and social reformer for espousing democratic and ecological causes.
According to the petition, the activist resorted only to peaceful Gandhian protest within Ladakh, an exercise of his constitutional right to speech and assembly. The detention amounts to a violation of free speech under Article 19, it stated.It had said the charges were “baseless and floated with the sole object of defaming, maligning and discrediting his peaceful Gandhian movement” aimed at protecting the ecology of Ladakh. Angmo had also challenged the transfer of Wangchuk to the Central Jail in Jodhpur, over a thousand kilometres from Ladakh, the site of protests.
