Police arrest climate activist Sonam Wangchuk in Leh, shift him to jail in Rajasthan's Jodhpur
Leh (PTI): Police arrested climate activist Sonam Wangchuk on Friday, two days after protests demanding Ladakh's statehood and Sixth Schedule status left four people dead and 90 injured in the Union Territory.
Wangchuk was taken into custody by a police party led by Ladakh Police chief S D Singh Jamwal at 2:30 pm, officials said, adding that he was subsequently lodged in a jail in Rajasthan's Jodhpur.
While there was no official word on the charges pressed against Wangchuk, sources within the Ladakh administration indicated that the stringent National Security Act (NSA) has been invoked against the climate activist.
The Union Territory administration has also snapped mobile internet services in the Leh area as a precautionary measure.
Wangchuk, a leading voice for the Leh Apex Body (LAB) and the Kargil Democratic Alliance (KDA), has been spearheading a five-year-long agitation demanding statehood and constitutional safeguards for the residents of Leh and Kargil, which form part of the Union Territory of Ladakh that was carved out from the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019.
The BJP-led Centre has blamed the climate activist for inciting the recent violence in Leh but Wangchuk has denied all the allegations.
"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," Wangchuk said on Thursday, adding that the violence was an indication that youngsters in the region were frustrated.
The arrest came a day after the Union home ministry cancelled the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) licence of the Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL), an organisation founded by Wangchuk, citing alleged financial discrepancies and a fund transfer deemed to be against "national interest".
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19-yr-old woman found hanging from tree in UP village; juvenile held
Lucknow/Pratapgarh (UP) (PTI): Police have apprehended a 16-year-old boy for his alleged involvement in the rape and murder of a 19-year-old woman whose body was found hanging from a tree in a village here, officials said on Monday.
Additional Superintendent of Police (West), Brijnandan Rai, said that the body of a 19-year-old woman was found hanging from a tree in an orchard in the Manikpur police station area on Sunday morning. A post-mortem examination subsequently confirmed that she had been raped.
Police registered a case against unidentified persons under sections 103(1) (punishment for murder) and 70(1) (gangrape) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and initiated an investigation.
During the course of the investigation, the police found that the deceased was in contact with a juvenile who was also her relative.
Acting on this information, during a joint checking operation, sub-inspector Amit Kumar Singh of Manikpur police station and SOG In-charge Amit Kumar Chaurasia, along with their team, apprehended the 16-year-old near the Lehdari Ganga River bridge.
The search for other accused persons is ongoing, police said.
According to the police, the woman had gone to sleep after dinner on Saturday night but was found hanging in an orchard nearly 400 metres away from her home the following morning.
Additional Superintendent of Police (West), Brijnandan Rai, had earlier said that the circumstances suggest foul play.
"The victim's slippers and undergarments were recovered 50 metres away from the spot where the body was found. There are visible injury marks on her body," Rai said.
While locals have alleged that the woman was murdered after being raped, the ASP said that it is "prima facie a case of murder."
"Based on the complaint filed by the victim's brother, a case of murder has been registered against unidentified persons," the officer added.
Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, in a post on X in Hindi on Monday, said, "The news of the heinous murder of a Dalit daughter in Pratapgarh is deeply tragic and condemnable."
"The question remains: why does the spate of murders of 'PDA daughters' continue unabated in Uttar Pradesh? Are the BJP government's claims regarding women's safety merely hollow rhetoric, or is there, in fact, discrimination even in the provision of security for women?" he said.
"Whenever the 'wandering Honourable (ghumantu maananiye)' finds a moment of respite from election campaigning, he should cast a glance at the plight of the daughters of his own Uttar Pradesh. In any case, apart from injustice and oppression, no sister, daughter, or mother of this state holds any hope from you," Yadav added.
