"Witch Hunt Began 4 Years Ago": Wife After Sonam Wangchuk Arrested

Social entrepreneur Gitanjali J Angmo, the wife of arrested activist Sonam Wangchuk, has refuted all the allegations made by the Centre against her husband after violence left four dead and over 50 injured during his hunger strike to demand statehood for Ladakh and Sixth Schedule under the Constitution last week.

Angmo said she has not heard from any of the officers who took her husband away from Ladakh, and it has been over 48 hours. Wangchuk faces charges under the stringent National Security Act that provides for long detention without bail.

Angmo alleged harassment and "witch hunt" started four years ago when Wangchuk began reminding the government about having a legislature in the Union Territory and Sixth Schedule. She said Intelligence Bureau operatives then came knocking at their doors with threats about not clearing the application for a licence to receive foreign funds for one of their two non-profits, Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL).

The other non-profit is Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL), which was created in 1988 with Wangchuk as one of the founding members.

SECMOL already had a licence under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), Angmo told NDTV, until last week when the Ministry of Home Affairs cancelled it citing five alleged violations, including the use of foreign funds to "study national sovereignty".

Angmo told NDTV trouble began when the expectations of Ladakhis of getting a legislature and bringing the mountainous region under the Sixth Schedule turned, instead, into a never-ending wait despite voting for the BJP in large numbers and supporting the party at every turn.

"He [Wangchuk] himself voted for the BJP when the last MP won. Everybody here voted for them to bring them to power because they were fulfilling our needs... Of having the Sixth Schedule, of having a legislature because a Union Territory without a legislature or without Sixth Schedule means you are just opening up to vultures," Angmo told NDTV's Aditya Raj Kaul in Ladakh on Sunday.

Sixth Schedule provides for the administration of tribal areas through an autonomous governance structure.

"So that is how it started four years ago. He [Wangchuk] has been on record doing it [protest], peacefully. But the string started getting tightened against us gradually. So our FCRA became the casualty," Angmo said, referring to SECMOL's loss of its registration last week under the law that deals with receiving foreign funds.

Angmo, a PhD who is instrumental in running HILA, termed as a "failure of the Ministry of Home Affairs" the allegations made by a senior police officer in Ladakh that Wangchuk has a Pakistani link.

Ladakh Director General of Police SD Singh Jamwal had questioned Wangchuk's Pakistan visits at a press conference on Saturday. He said the activist from Ladakh attended an event in Pakistan hosted by the newspaper Dawn, and kept in touch with a Pakistani person of Indian origin (PIO).

"That is the failure of the Ministry of Home Affairs if they have found such a thing. What has been the MHA doing that a Pakistani intelligence person is roaming here? They have failed in their duty. I want them to be answerable," Angmo said.

She told NDTV her husband went for a conference at the Breathe Pakistan event as a scientist, as a person who has been working on climate change.

"It was a conference that was held at the behest of the United Nations... which works with all in the Himalayan region because climate change and glaciers are not going to look at your boundaries to cause a flood in Pakistan or India. There are some issues which go beyond geopolitics and where countries, even though they may have geopolitical tension, have to work together," Angmo said, adding she has videos of Wangchuk praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi in front of a thousand people at the Pakistan event over the prime minister's initiatives on fighting air pollution, reducing carbon emissions, and dealing with climate change.

"So, where are people getting this connection between his [Wangchuk's] visit to Pakistan and this? Modi travels to China. He shakes hands with Muhammad Yunus. So it is the intent behind the meetings. So, not everybody who goes to China is a terrorist," Angmo said.

She refuted the MHA's allegations that her husband's provocative speech incited mobs to turn violent. She said Wangchuk stopped his fast immediately and condemned the violence because he did not want the protesters to be harmed.

"If he were inciting, then he could have done more, right? But he stopped his fast because he didn't want this to escalate. And the bereaved families, even after losing their sons, said it was not at all Sonam Wangchuk's fault. He did not incite it. He didn't even know this was happening. He was in another park peacefully, and this was supposed to be a peaceful protest," Angmo said.

She said when SECMOL had an FCRA registration, all the funds that came had been used for the intended purposes. It was "Rs 4 lakh or something", she said, adding they applied for FCRA licence for HIAL "two-three years ago" but that did not work out after Wangchuk began his protest fast.

"When Sonam went on fast for the first time, the Intelligence Bureau used to visit us every day. And they started using FCRA as a blackmailing tool that if you continued with this action, your FCRA licence won't be finalised. So Sonam said, OK, don't do it. We are not dependent on foreign funds," Angmo said.

She took a swipe at the government over the mention of the study of national sovereignty as against "national interest", which violated FCRA guidelines.

"One of the points in the ministry's notification was about the sovereignty of the nation. I mean, it can either be an idiot who does it or a malicious person, because people are laughing at this line from the ministry, so frivolous. It was about food sovereignty for heaven's sake. Food sovereignty is when you grow your own food..." Angmo said.

One day before Wangchuk was arrested under the NSA, he told NDTV his non-profit did not take foreign contributions, but has done business transactions with the UN, Swiss and Italian organisations and paid all taxes.

"... They mistook it as foreign contributions. I consider it a mistake on their [Centre's] part and therefore I don't mind it. But that's what was thought of as a foreign contribution. It is not," he told NDTV's Padmaja Joshi on Thursday.

The MHA said it was clear the mob was incited by Wangchuk through his provocative statements. "Incidentally, amidst these violent developments, he broke his fast and left for his village in an ambulance without making serious efforts to control the situation," the MHA said on the day violence broke out.

Ladakh's gradual swing from cheering on becoming a Union Territory in 2019 after the Centre scrapped special status to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Constitution, to the current tension due to demand for statehood, has led to speculation that foreign hands and local vested interests could be involved in engineering the crisis.

However, discontentment has been brewing for the last few years over a perceived political vacuum under the Lieutenant Governor. This factor led to the coming together of political and religious groups from Buddhist-majority Leh and Muslim-majority Kargil under joint platforms to raise their demands.