Centre opposes Sonam Wangchuk’s request to appear via video in Supreme Court NSA case

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Monday strongly opposed climate activist Sonam Wangchuk’s request to appear before the Supreme Court via video conferencing from Jodhpur jail in the case related to his detention under the National Security Act (NSA).During the hearing, senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing Wangchuk’s wife Gitanjali J Angmo, requested that the 52-year-old activist be allowed to join the proceedings via video from jail. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, opposed the request, saying, “We will have to give the same treatment to all convicts across the country.”The Supreme Court, however, did not pass any order on the request and adjourned the matter to December 15. The two-judge bench, headed by Justices Aravind Kumar and N V Anjaria, is hearing a plea filed by Angmo alleging that Wangchuk’s detention was illegal and arbitrary, violating his fundamental rights. On October 29, the court had sought responses from the Centre and the Ladakh administration on her amended plea.In her petition, Angmo claimed that her husband’s detention was “not based on genuine concerns of public order or security” and described it as “a calculated attempt to silence Wangchuk’s right to dissent.” She argued that the detention order relied on “stale, irrelevant, and extraneous FIRs,” noting that three of the five FIRs cited were from 2024 and bore no direct connection to his detention in September 2025. She further stated that four of the five FIRs, three of which were registered against “unknown persons,” did not name Wangchuk, and thus there was “no clear, live, proximate, or intelligible connection” between the FIRs and his preventive detention under the NSA.



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