Gitanjali visited Wangchuk on Friday, her first meeting with him since his hunger strike began, and has since taken the lead in responding to the government after he was “forcibly removed” from Jantar Mantar and shifted to Safdarjung Hospital. She was also central to securing his release earlier this year, after nearly five months in detention following violent protests in Ladakh. It’s put her squarely in the national spotlight.
Gitanjali is Wangchuk’s second wife. The activist, believed to have inspired Aamir Khan’s character in “3 Idiots,” was previously married to Rebecca Norman, an American citizen, before the marriage ended in divorce.
Who is Gitanjali Angmo?
Wangchuk has often clashed with the government. Gitanjali, by contrast, has kept a low profile for most of their marriage. A social entrepreneur and educationist, she co-founded the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives (HIAL) in Ladakh, which works on problems specific to communities living in the region’s harsh conditions green campuses, passive solar-heated buildings, and similar sustainable technologies. HIAL also built solar-heated tents for the Army in 2021 and runs fellowships and short courses. The institute came under CBI scrutiny last year over alleged foreign funding violations.
Born to a Punjabi family in Odisha’s Balasore, Gitanjali studied physics at Fakir Mohan University before an MBA at Bhubaneswar’s Xavier Institute of Management. She spent the next 15 years in the corporate sector, largely in Denmark, before returning to India to build her own ventures Pushan and Shanghai Power Projects Ltd and a publishing house, Helios Books. She co-founded HIAL with Wangchuk in 2017.
Angmo doesn’t often discuss her personal life, but she opened up about her marriage in a 2025 interview with Brut, describing how she met Wangchuk at an education conference. “It was interesting to see that we were finishing each other’s sentences. There was so much similarity in the way we wanted to work in education and life in general,” she said.
Her LinkedIn profile adds some unexpected detail: a black belt in karate, training in Odissi and Russian ballet, a Chevening scholarship from Oxford, and the government’s Women Transforming India Award. She describes herself there as a “spiritual seeker” with an interest in Indian spirituality.
Pillar of support during detention
Gitanjali first drew wide public attention for standing by Wangchuk during his detention under the National Security Act last September, when he was held at Jodhpur Central Jail. He’d been detained after violent protests in Ladakh over demands for statehood and inclusion under the Constitution’s Sixth Schedule protests that left four dead and more than 50 injured. It wasn’t his first hunger strike; he has pushed these demands repeatedly since Ladakh became a Union Territory in 2019, having previously been part of Jammu and Kashmir.
During the detention, Gitanjali became his most visible advocate. She took the case to the Supreme Court, challenging his prolonged custody in a move believed to have contributed to his release after 170 days, and wrote to the President seeking intervention. After he was freed, she described the toll on X: “My ordeal of making two trips every week for just a 60-minute meeting over the past five months has finally ended.”
When Wangchuk began his latest hunger strike on June 28 demanding Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation over paper leaks Gitanjali initially kept away from the protest site, backing him instead through newspaper op-eds. By the 20th day, as his health worsened, she visited him and asked him to call it off. He refused.
“Will lead march to Parliament”
Saturday brought her back into the open. She led the response after Wangchuk was “forcibly removed” from the protest site — Delhi Police said the move followed High Court directions and medical advice posting a stream of updates through the day. First, she asked doctors not to give him any oral or intravenous treatment without her consent. Minutes later, she said she wasn’t being allowed to bring her phone into the hospital.
“Why are they not letting our phones inside? Why is there such heavy police deployment? It seems like this is not Safdarjung hospital, but Safdarjung prison,” she said.
She went on to allege a lack of transparency at the hospital, claiming she couldn’t get a second opinion on his condition. “This lack of transparency is making us suspicious, and we have asked to be discharged immediately,” she wrote.
Wangchuk had been due to join a march to Parliament on July 20, organised by the Cockroach Janta Party, on the first day of the Monsoon session. Gitanjali said she’d lead it in his place.