Govt seeking dates as no merit in NSA case against Sonam Wangchuk, says wife Gitanjali Angmo
New Delhi (PTI): Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk's wife Gitanjali Angmo has said his arrest reflects the state of democracy in the country where power is used to "illegally detain" people, and contended that the case has "no merit" as fresh dates are repeatedly sought by the government in court.
In an interview with PTI, Angmo alleged that Wangchuk should already be out of prison considering "procedural lapses" by authorities, and said it is an "open and shut case".
Angmo said she was, however, "a bit disappointed" the detention has not faced stronger pushback. "We cannot afford to be silent," she said, calling for a collective and louder opposition to his arrest.
"...it's not just about Sonam Wangchuk as an individual, but about the state of democracy in this country, about the use of power for illegal detention of people who have been working for this country. If it can happen to Sonam, it can happen to anybody else," she said.
Wangchuk, a Magsaysay Award-winning climate activist and educator, was detained under the stringent National Security Act (NSA) on September 26, two days after protests demanding statehood and Sixth Schedule status for Ladakh left four people dead and 90 injured in the Union territory, and was taken to Jodhpur jail.
The climate activist is accused of making "provocative statements" that led to the violence.
Angmo, who has co-founded the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh, with Wangchuk, has filed a habeas corpus petition challenging his detention and seeking his immediate release.
"It has been quite an uphill task, getting the detention order and meeting Sonam needed a habeas corpus to be filed in the Supreme Court and even after that was filed, to get his handwritten notes was a challenge," Angmo said.
The handwritten notes prepared by Wangchuk regarding his detention are part of legal documentation submitted to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday adjourned to January 29 the hearing of a plea filed by Angmo against Wangchuk's detention under the NSA.
Earlier, the top court had deferred the matter on November 24 last year, after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the Centre and the Union Territory of Ladakh, sought time to respond to a rejoinder filed by Angmo.
On October 29, the court had sought responses from the Centre and the Ladakh administration on an amended plea of Angmo.
Angmo told PTI that as per the NSA, authorities should provide all documents, including the ones that establish the grounds of detention, to the detainee within "five or maximum 10 days".
"But these four videos were given to him on the 28th day, on October 23. This is a very big procedural lapse, based on which the detention order should be made void ab initio and quashed," she said.
"In a way, it is an open and shut case just on this alone because it violates Section 8 of the National Security Act. Corollary to this is that because he did not get these videos, he was denied a chance to make an effective representation -- Section 11 of the NSA -- in front of the advisory board," she said.
Angmo said the grounds of detention used against Wangchuk "are stale" and some of them "rely on videos that are one and a half years old or one year old".
She said out of the five FIRs that have been relied upon, three don't name him. Among the two that name him, one dates back to August 2025, to which no notice was given or inquiry made, she said.
Angmo added that the district magistrate's detention order is a "copy-paste" of the proposal given by the Superintendent of Police.
"...the district magistrate should apply his mind and not just cut copy-paste whatever is given to him," she said. "There are several judgments to this effect that if application of mind has not happened, then that also makes the detention infructuous."
When asked about Wangchuk's detention being raised in the recent Parliament session, she said she was thankful to those who raised it, including Ladakh MP Mohmad Haneefa whose "mic was muted" when he brought it up.
"But I am also a bit disappointed that it hasn't been raised to the extent that it should have been," she added.
The educator stressed that they are not trying to make the case political but rued the "delays".
"The Solicitor General of India, who represents the Union (government), always keeps taking dates after dates, employing delay tactics, because I think they have realised that there is no merit in the case," she said.
However, she added, "I am told that compared to other cases, we still are getting dates which are quick enough".
Angmo also said that over the last three and a half months, she observed that society is becoming more and more "polarised".
"You know, we are either belonging to this party or that, or this sect or that. My appeal to everybody would be to become a true citizen of independent India, you know, with a mind and wisdom of our own. To be above even party ideologies and to think in the larger interest of the nation," she said.
"Let us not lose our wisdom and discernment and be swayed by narratives and party ideologies," she stressed.
Asked about their institutes, HIAL and SECMOL (Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh), she said, "I would like to really applaud our second line of leadership, who have really risen to the occasion and have not allowed any disruption to happen".
She added, however, that the case has led to delays in the new projects they were planning.
"The new projects that we were envisaging, which I was personally leading, like the teacher training fellowship and the kindergarten K-12 school that we were planning to launch this year, have been delayed," Angmo said.
She also said many who were funding their institutions have said "they are being pressured" not to stop funding.
"The silver lining is that a lot of people earlier used to tell me that people don't know about HIAL as much. But now more and more people know about the school. I'm sure once we tide this over, there will again be a lot of support and open support," she added.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
Trump loyalist Pam Bondi out as attorney general
Washington (AP): US President Donald Trump said Thursday that Pam Bondi is out as his attorney general, ending the contentious tenure of a loyalist who upended the Justice Department's culture of independence from the White House, oversaw large-scale firings of career employees and moved aggressively to investigate the Republican president's perceived enemies.
The departure followed months of scrutiny over the Justice Department's handling of files related to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation and failed efforts to meet Trump's unwavering demands for criminal cases against his adversaries. As Trump's own frustrations mounted, he began privately discussing firing Bondi, people familiar with the matter say.
“Pam Bondi is a Great American Patriot and a loyal friend, who faithfully served as my Attorney General over the past year,” Trump said in a statement. He added, “We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future.”
Trump named Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, one of his former personal lawyers, as the acting attorney general. Three people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Thursday that he has privately discussed Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, as a permanent pick.
ALSO READ: President Trump in 'freefall', says fan-turned-critic podcaster Alex Jones
In her own statement, Bondi called the job “the honor of a lifetime” and said she would be working over the next month to transition the position to Blanche.
Bondi came into office 14 months ago pledging that she would not play politics with the Justice Department. But she quickly set out to do Trump's bidding, heaping lavish praise at congressional hearings and White House events, firing prosecutors deemed insufficiently loyal to the president and opening investigations into his political foes. The intense turmoil contributed to the resignations of hundreds of employees, with the norm-breaking actions stirring concern that he department was being wielded as a tool to advance Trump's personal and political interests.
“Pam Bondi oversaw an unprecedented weaponization of the Justice Department that brought our nation's rule of law to its knees,” said Sen. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat.
Bondi rejected accusations that she politicised the Justice Department and said her mission was to restore the institution's credibility after overreach by President Joe Biden's Democratic administration, which included two federal criminal cases against Trump. Bondi's defenders have said she worked to refocus the department to better tackle illegal immigration and violent crime and brought much-needed change to an agency they believe unfairly targeted conservatives.
Embracing, supporting and protecting the president
-------------------------------------------------------
Bondi's public embrace of the president, however, marked a sharp departure from her predecessors, who generally took pains to maintain an arm's-length distance from the White House to protect the impartiality of investigations and prosecutions. Bondi postured herself as Trump's chief supporter and protector, praising and defending him in congressional hearings and placing a banner with his face on the exterior of Justice Department headquarters.
She called for an end to the “weaponisation” of law enforcement she said occurred under the Biden administration, even though Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, the special counsel who produced two cases against Trump, have said they followed the facts, the evidence and the law in their decision-making. Bondi's critics, meanwhile, said she was the one who had politicised the agency to do the president's bidding.
“You've turned the People's Department of Justice into Trump's instrument of revenge,” Rep Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary committee, said at a February hearing.
Bondi delivered a combative performance but few substantive answers at that hearing as she angrily insulted her Democratic questioners with name-calling, praised Trump over the performance of the stock market — “The Dow is up over 50,000 right now” —- and openly aligned herself as in sync with a president whom she painted as a victim of past impeachments and investigations.
Even Republicans began to challenge her, with the Republican-led House Oversight Committee last month issuing a subpoena to her to appear for a closed-door interview about the Epstein files.
Under Bondi's leadership, the department opened investigations into a string of Trump foes, including Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan. The high-profile prosecutions of Comey and James were short-lived as they were quickly thrown out by a judge who ruled that the prosecutor who brought the cases was illegally appointed.
Trump repeatedly praised and defended Bondi publicly but also showed flashes of impatience with his attorney general's efforts to meet his demands to prosecute his rivals. In one extraordinary social media post last year, Trump called on Bondi to move quickly to prosecute his foes, including James and Comey, telling her, “We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility.”
ALSO READ: Earthquake off Indonesia topples buildings, kills 1, sets off small tsunami
Bondi oversaw the exodus of thousands of career employees — both through firings and voluntary departures — including lawyers who prosecuted violent attacks on police at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021; environmental, civil rights and ethics enforcers; counterterrorism prosecutors; and others.
Fumbling the Epstein files
---------------------------
She struggled to overcome early stumbles over the Epstein files that angered conservatives eager for government bombshells about the case, which has long fascinated conspiracy theorists. She herself had fed the conspiracy theory machine with a suggestion in a 2025 Fox News Channel interview that Epstein's “client list” was sitting on her desk for review. The department later acknowledged that no such document exists.
Bondi was ridiculed over a move to hand out binders of Epstein files to conservative influencers at the White House, only for it to be later revealed that the documents included no new revelations. And despite promises that more files were going to become public, the Justice Department in July said no more would be released, prompting Congress to pass a bill to force the agency to do so.
The Epstein files fumbles led to a stunning public criticism from White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, a close friend of Bondi's, who told Vanity Fair that the attorney general “completely whiffed.” The Justice Department's release of millions of pages of Epstein files did little to tamp down criticism, prompting a House committee with the support of five Republicans to subpoena Bondi to answer questions under oath.
Bondi, who defended Trump during his first impeachment trial, was his second choice to lead the Justice Department, picked for the role after former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida withdrew his name from consideration amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations.
