Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk said he feared he could be killed in an “encounter” for speaking against the government and demanded Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s resignation over the police firing in Leh last year that left four people dead. Marking the first anniversary of the September 24, 2025 violence, Wangchuk also demanded that the judicial inquiry report into the episode be made public, warning that an independent “people’s tribunal” would be constituted if the findings continued to remain unpublished.
“They have put me in jail. Now there is even a possibility that I could be encountered somewhere. People tell me, ‘You will be encountered’. If that happens, let it happen — so that the country wakes up,” Wangchuk told a gathering in Leh. His apprehension about an encounter was not accompanied by evidence identifying a specific threat or person allegedly behind it.
‘Amit Shah should resign’
Wangchuk directly held Shah politically responsible for the deaths during the agitation, which had erupted amid demands for statehood and constitutional safeguards for Ladakh under the Sixth Schedule. “Today, from Ladakh, I say — Amit Shah should resign. He has to take responsibility for what happened in Ladakh,” he said.
The activist alleged that automatic weapons, including AK-47s, were used against protesters during the violence and questioned the official justification that firing had been carried out in self-defence. “Four people were killed in that firing. The bullets did not hit their legs; people were hit in the chest and back,” he said, demanding that the circumstances surrounding the firing be independently established.
Wangchuk also alleged that three magistrates present during the violence had refused to sign firing orders and were subsequently put under pressure. The claim has not been independently established, and Wangchuk said it was among the issues that should be examined by the judicial inquiry.
The Ministry of Home Affairs had ordered an inquiry headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice B S Chauhan to examine the circumstances leading to the September 24, 2025 law-and-order situation, the subsequent police action and the deaths. Wangchuk said the report should now be placed in the public domain and warned that failure to do so would prompt activists to establish their own tribunal to examine the episode.
Questions Rahul Gandhi too
While mounting his attack on Shah, Wangchuk also questioned Congress leader Rahul Gandhi over what he described as his silence on Ladakh. Referring to Gandhi’s demand for Shah’s resignation following police action against students at Jantar Mantar in Delhi, Wangchuk said he supported that call but asked why the Congress leader had not responded similarly to the deaths in Leh.
“Rahul Gandhi stood up and asked how such weapons could be used against students, demanding Amit Shah’s resignation. I support that,” Wangchuk said. “But if he demanded Amit Shah’s resignation earlier, then what about what happened in Ladakh, where AK-47s were used and people were killed, with bullets hitting their heads and chests?”
Wangchuk said the four people killed during the protests deserved justice and argued that accountability for the episode went beyond Ladakh. He linked the violence to the region’s continuing demands for statehood and Sixth Schedule safeguards, accusing the Centre of failing to fulfil assurances made to the people of Ladakh.
Police reject intimidation charge
Wangchuk also alleged that heavy security deployment and barricading had created fear and discouraged people from participating in Thursday’s commemoration. He claimed armed personnel had been deployed in villages and at crossings and that village representatives and students were being discouraged from attending programmes remembering those killed.
Ladakh Police rejected the allegations as “false, baseless, and misleading”, saying nobody had been prevented from attending the prayer meeting. Police said permission had been granted to the Ladakh Buddhist Association to hold the programme at Leh’s NDS ground, which has a capacity of around 10,000 people, but fewer than 800 people attended.
Police maintained that barricades in the city had been installed strictly for traffic and crowd management after organisers initially projected a large gathering. It said no individual was stopped from proceeding to the venue, presenting a sharply different account from Wangchuk’s claim that the security presence had discouraged participation.
‘Even China is not doing this to Tibet’
Wangchuk also delivered one of his strongest attacks yet on the Centre’s handling of Ladakh, arguing that the region had chosen India because of its faith in democracy. “Ladakh had China on one side and India on the other. Ladakh chose India because we believed that in India, there is democracy, we would be able to live with our heads held high,” he said.
“And today, such oppression is being inflicted on Ladakh that, in my view, even China is not doing this to Tibet,” he added. His comparison was a political assertion and did not amount to an independent assessment of conditions in Ladakh and Tibet.
Wangchuk, who was detained under the National Security Act following the September 2025 unrest and released in March this year, said the movement for constitutional protections would continue despite what he described as an atmosphere of fear. The government, while revoking his detention in March, had said it remained committed to peace and stability in Ladakh and to addressing the region’s concerns through dialogue.
A year after four deaths
A shutdown was observed across Leh, Kargil and other parts of Ladakh to mark a year since the violence, with shops and businesses closed and traffic remaining thin. Some groups in the region observed the anniversary as “Martyrs’ Day” or “Shaheed Diwas”.
The September 2025 violence had broken out during an agitation over statehood and Sixth Schedule protections, resulting in the deaths of four civilians in police firing. A year later, with the judicial inquiry findings yet to be made public, Wangchuk has sought to put accountability for the killings back at the centre of Ladakh’s political agitation.