LEH (The Thursday Times) — The Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk has asked the region’s administration to tell him in writing whether he is free to leave his home, saying about 20 armed police officers posted at and around his residence have in effect confined him there.
“The practical effect of their presence is that I am confined to my house,” Wangchuk said in a written representation dated Thursday, November 12. If he was not free to go out, he asked, under which legal provision was he being restrained.
A 60-day order issued on Wednesday by Leh’s additional district magistrate under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita bars him from organising or joining unauthorised rallies and gatherings. Wangchuk said the order does not tell him to stay at home or mention house arrest, detention, or confinement, and that police told him only orally to remain indoors after taking him there on Wednesday evening.
Taken home from a sit-in
Wangchuk said he was at NDS Memorial Park in Leh, the planned venue of a sit-in, at about 8pm on Wednesday when police arrived and handed him a copy of the order. He alleged that four masked men pushed him into a vehicle and drove him to his home on the campus of the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh, and that he was not allowed to use his phone to tell his family or call a lawyer. Police had earlier said they escorted him home under prohibitory orders.
He called the order’s ban on “any activity” vague, saying it did not say where he could go or when, and could stop him from working, seeking medical care, worshipping, or meeting family obligations. He asked for a copy of the letter from Leh’s senior superintendent of police on which the order was based, and for both the order and the police deployment to be withdrawn.
The sit-in had been called against the advancing of hill council elections to December 4, the stalled dialogue between Ladakh’s leaders and the central government, and the delay in publishing a judicial inquiry’s report into the violence in Leh on September 24, 2025, in which four people were killed. About 600 people gathered on Thursday and the protest passed off peacefully, Wangchuk said.
He said the election process ends on December 8 and accused the administration of moving to curb his rights before the vote.
Police say peace comes first
Kaushal Sharma, the deputy inspector general of police for the Leh-Kargil range, said keeping peace and public order was the force’s top priority. Police act under the rules “wherever we believe unlawful activities are taking place or there is a possibility of a breach of peace,” he said, adding that the security deployment and barricades were temporary.
He said the Election Commission bars protests within municipal limits during the election period, and urged residents to take part in the democratic process instead.
The Leh Apex Body, led by Chering Dorje Lakruk, kept up its protest for a second day on Thursday, and its leaders said Wangchuk was under house arrest. In Kargil, Sajjad Kargili, a co-chairman of the Kargil Democratic Alliance, said: “Under no circumstances can anyone be prevented from expressing dissent in a peaceful manner.” He said a delegation would travel to Leh on Friday to meet Wangchuk and the apex body’s chairman, and announced a candle march in Kargil on Friday evening.
Ladakh votes in panchayat and municipal elections on November 21, followed by polls to its eight hill development councils on December 4.
