Delhi High Court rejects plea; Sonam Wangchuk’s wife says his fast will end if House takes up cause

The court refused to grant any interim relief to Wangchuk’s wife Gitanjali J Angmo, who had asked for her husband’s immediate discharge so that he could be admitted to the private Medanta hospital.

WHEN WILL I END THE FAST….! pic.twitter.com/R4HQQmycdq

— Sonam Wangchuk (@Wangchuk66) July 20, 2026

Following the court’s order, Angmo told protesters at Jantar Mantar in the evening that Wangchuk would break his fast on Monday if political leaders assured him that the issue of accountability in education would be raised in Monsoon Session.

“If the MPs and leaders come to meet him tomorrow morning at Safdarjung hospital, and promise him that they would raise the issue of education and accountability in Parliament, only then will he break his fast tomorrow,” she said.

Sonam Wangchuk’s wife Gitanjali J Angmo with former J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah outside the Safdarjung hospital in New Delhi, Sunday. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha)

“But if we don’t get this accountability and this is not raised in Parliament, then he will not break his fast,” she said.

Wangchuk had gone on an indefinite hunger strike on June 28 as part of the protest by the activist youth platform Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) to demand the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan for the leak of the May 3 NEET-UG question paper.

Police picked him up from the protest site on Saturday morning, the 21st day of the fast, invoking an order passed by the High Court earlier in the week, and “on expert medical advice due to the [activist’s] deteriorating health condition”.

After a hearing that lasted for almost 40 minutes on Sunday afternoon, Justice Mini Pushkarna of the High Court observed that “it cannot be said that any force is being used against Mr Wangchuk, or his bodily autonomy is being violated in any manner”, since only oral interventions have been administered so far without his consent, which were deemed to be necessary in light of his “deteriorating” medical condition.

Wangchuk has been refusing intravenous administration of medical intervention in hospital.

Activist Sonam Wangchunk’s wife speaks from the stage flanked by members of the Cockroach Janta Party at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Sunday. (Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)

Dr Akshay Kumar, additional professor in the department of emergency medicine at AIIMS who has joined the Safdarjung team, told the court that Wangchuk “needs to take vitamins” starting with thymine, but “we cannot give him that since he is not allowing IV (intravenous) access.”

Justice Pushkarna recorded in her order that Wangchuk “will cooperate with doctors in administering any medical intervention as doctors feel”.

While refusing Wangchuk’s request for a transfer to Medanta, the court ordered that Safdarjung hospital shall share his medical records with his family. Angmo had alleged that the hospital was not providing her detailed reports of the medical tests being conducted on her husband.

The court noted that Wangchuk was not in detention and was a free citizen. However, considering that he “on his own volition did not check himself into any [hospital] facility in view of his deteriorating condition, the government was within its rights to take such action”.

Angmo, who was represented by senior advocate Kapil Sibal, was herself present in the courtroom, and told the court that the family would take Wangchuk’s “discharge against medical advice”.

Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Chetan Sharma, representing the government along with central government counsel Ashish Dixit, vehemently resisted Angmo’s request.

“These are extraordinary circumstances, or rather prevailing circumstances… The government has to be extra careful… Whatever happens to him will have consequences… So the government has to be more circumspect than it is normally, and extra cautious,” ASG Sharma said.

The court did not make any observation on Angmo’s complaint that the family was “constantly” under police surveillance inside the hospital, including in the room where Wangchuk has been kept, and that police were “eavesdropping” on conversations.

On July 16, the Delhi High Court had directed the Centre to ensure that Wangchuk’s health was monitored on a daily basis by government doctors, and to “intervene depending on the medical report”. The HC had said that all “life is precious and should be taken care of”.

Angmo alleged in her petition that police took “undue advantage” of the July 16 order “as a colourable pretext” to remove Wangchuk from the protest site at Jantar Mantar “without [his] free and informed consent”.

She said that at the hospital, Wangchuk had been “kept in a solitary manner, ostensibly under the pretext of medical treatment”. While she had access to her husband, the activist’s “access to his lawyer and his treating doctors was arbitrarily denied, in complete disregard of his rights and those of his family”.

Soon after the court’s order, Angmo told reporters that the proposed march to Parliament would go ahead as scheduled on Monday, and that she would represent her husband.

“I will definitely represent him… We filed an urgent petition today because had we been allowed to shift (Wangchuk) today, we could have gone to Medanta and then arrived at the protest site by tomorrow morning. But we knew they wouldn’t allow that,” she said.

Angmo alleged that Wangchuk had been removed not out of concern for his health, but because the government was afraid of the momentum his protest was gathering.

“They said they brought him in because they were deeply concerned about his health as it was declining. But these claims are incorrect. First of all, his health was not deteriorating at all… If you were truly so concerned about his health, why did you send police personnel in plainclothes? Why did you so ruthlessly pick him up, put him on a stretcher, and take him away? You could have simply come to conduct a medical test and informed his family that a certain level was low and you wished to take him in for that reason…,” she said.

“If you were genuinely concerned about his health…then this whole narrative about health concerns is nothing but a charade. They were simply afraid that if Sonam set out on his march, hundreds of thousands of people would join him — not just in Delhi, but across the entire country — and they were trying to prevent that…,” she alleged.

Speaking in the evening at Jantar Mantar, Angmo repeated that although Wangchuk was weak from fasting, his vitals were good.

Abhijeet Dipke, who founded CJP as an online satirical platform before it evolved into the protest movement, said that the protesters would not vacate the Jantar Mantar site until Wangchuk returned.