New Delhi : The Centre on Monday defended the preventive detention of Ladakh-based social activist Sonam Wangchuk before the Supreme Court, arguing that his public speeches amounted to incitement. Appearing for the Union government, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the court that Wangchuk had attempted to provoke the younger generation into pushing Ladakh towards a situation similar to Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
A Bench of Justice Aravind Kumar and Justice Prasanna Varale was hearing a petition filed by Wangchuk’s wife, Geetanjali, challenging his detention. At the outset, the Bench observed that under Article 32, the court does not sit in appeal over detention orders, and the key question was whether the reasons, grounds and material relied upon for detention had a nexus with national security. According to the detention order, the DM concluded that Wangchuk’s speeches had the potential to incite harmful activities and disturb public peace.
Mehta said the detention order was passed after due process and within four hours. He told the court that a DIG had met Wangchuk, shown him the video clips of his speeches, and Wangchuk had agreed that the clips were authentic. Mehta argued that the activist deliberately separated inflammatory remarks from references to non-violence and Mahatma Gandhi, using the latter as a cover.
The district magistrate must see the speech in its entirety. You cannot pick one line, one word, or one sentence and say, I was only saying what Gandhiji said, Mehta submitted, adding that Gen Z has its own dictionary. He cited Wangchuk as saying that a sudden influx of young protesters had emerged like a flood, and that he did not know where they had come from, but that “they were expecting a Nepal-like riot situation and could take inspiration from Nepal.
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