Leh: Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk was arrested on Friday, two days after protests demanding Ladakh’s statehood and Sixth Schedule status turned violent, leaving four dead and 90 injured.
Officials said Wangchuk was taken into custody at 2:30 pm by a police team led by Ladakh Police chief S. D. Singh Jamwal and later shifted to a jail in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Though authorities have not officially confirmed the charges, sources in the Ladakh administration indicated that the stringent National Security Act (NSA) has been invoked against him.
As a precaution, mobile internet services have been suspended in Leh.
Wangchuk, a prominent leader of the Leh Apex Body (LAB) and the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA), has been at the forefront of a five-year-long movement seeking statehood and constitutional safeguards for Ladakh, which was carved out of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019.
The BJP-led Centre has accused Wangchuk of instigating the recent violence, an allegation he has firmly rejected. “To say it was instigated by me is to find a scapegoat rather than addressing the core of the problem, and this will lead us nowhere,” he said on Thursday, adding that the unrest reflected growing frustration among the region’s youth.
His arrest came a day after the Union Home Ministry cancelled the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) licence of SECMOL, the educational and cultural movement founded by Wangchuk, citing financial irregularities and fund transfers deemed “against national interest.”
