Supreme Court Adjourns Habeas Plea Challenging Sonam Wangchuk's Detention Till March 17

The Supreme Court today(March 10) adjourned the hearing of a habeas corpus petition, seeking to declare the preventive detention of Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk under the National Security Act, 1980, as illegal. The petition has been filed by his wife, Dr Gitanjali Angmo.A bench comprising Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice PB Varale adjourned it to next Tuesday after the Court was informed by Additional Solicitor General KM Nataraj that Solicitor General Tushar Mehta is not keeping well and did not come to the Court today. This comes after the matter was adjourned on February 26, and the Court had said that in any case, it will reserve the matter for judgment on the next hearing.Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal(for Angmo) did not say anything but orally commented that this is sending a "wrong signal" across the country. It may be recalled that Mehta had sought to address the issue raised by the bench regarding the translations of Wangchuk's speeches. During rejoinder arguments earlier, Sibal had pointed out that the alleged inciteful statements attributed to Wangchuk in the detention order did not find mention in the chart of translated speeches produced by the Union.Sibal argued that the detention order was based on non-existent material, as Wangchuk had never stated that he wanted to “overthrow” the government or made other similar statements attributed to him.According to Sibal, when ASG Nataraj presented the Union's reply, these statements did not appear in the translated speeches relied upon by the Union.The bench had then questioned the discrepancy in the translations. Justice Kumar orally observed that in the era of artificial intelligence, translation accuracy is about 98%. Justice Varale, meanwhile, remarked that there should not be any malice in the translation of Wangchuk's speeches. The bench subsequently directed the Union to place on record a true translation of the speeches.Case Details: GITANJALI J. ANGMO v UNION OF INDIA AND ORS|W.P.(Crl.) No. 399/2025The writ petition has been filed by Advocate on Record, Dr Sarvam Ritam Khare

Supreme Court Adjourns Habeas Plea Challenging Sonam Wangchuk's Detention Till March 17

Gursimran Kaur Bakshi

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